Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Lee,
> Dear Dave,
> Thanks for repeating your view.
> 
> 
> >   I see the WP as a simple statement,
> > e.g. "I stubbed my toe.  It hurt."  Obviously the hurt comes after the
> > accident, but the verb forms don't tell us that.  Also, it's clear that
> > stubbing one's toe is a perfective event, but again the verb form
> > doesn't tell us that.  The meanings of the verbs involved tell us that,
> > i.e. the semantics of the two clauses code this information, the
> > syntax doesn't.  With the WP, things like aspect, sequentiality (if
> > there is such a word), tense etc. are coded by the semantics and
> > pragmatics of the clauses and words, not by the syntax of the verb
> > form.  Does that make more sense?  Sorry for any confusion I may
> > have caused earlier.
> 
> No, I am afraid that it doesn't make sense to me.  I cannot agree with your 
> statements
> above.

Okay, now I need some clarification.  When you say it doesn't 
make sense, do you mean the view still isn't clear, or that you don't 
agree?  If I need to make it clearer, let me know and I'll try.  If it 
means you don't agree with it, cool.

> > > Dave, my questions for you (and anyone else) are:
> > > 1) What is the origin and function of the Wa+Dagesh morpheme?
> >
> > I see this morpheme as what Ray Jackendoff calls a "specified
> > grammatical formative" that happens to resemble the conjunction in
> > its consonant.  This shouldn't surprise us: we have other examples
> > of this phenomenon, such as the H-article and the H-interrogative,
> > as well as the elided form of MN looking just like the participial
> > formative in non-qal verb stems.  In essense, I don't see us dealing
> > with an attached waw, but with  an attached waw+patah+dagesh.
> 
> I agree so far, but...
> 
> 
> > In my view, its function is to signal the simple (usually past)
> > declarative, having no syntactic relation to what precedes it
> > (syntactic being the key word there).
> 
> I appreciate your innovation, but your term "simple declarative" just does 
> not fit what I
> see in the Hebrew text.  Qatal is often "simple declarative."  Yiqtol in 
> the present and
> future tenses is "simple declarative."

Agreed.  That's why I tossed in the "usually past" part; I'm still 
looking into that part of it.  As I said in '92 when I originally 
presented this idea to the SBL, I'm under no illusions that this is 
the final word on the subject.  Why don't you toss out some 
passages that you don't see as fitting this model and let's kick 
them around a bit?  I'm interested to hear your viewpoint as well as 
your critiques of mine.

Before we do that, though, I'd like to know how familiar you are with 
transformational-generative grammar, and especially features like 
the autonomous syntax principle.  I'll tell you up front that I am not 
as well versed in discourse grammar as I could be; I understand 
the basic terminology and some of the overall concepts, but haven't 
delved into its intricacies at all.  My decision to stay at the clause 
level in my studies was and is a conscious one, but everything in 
life is a trade-off.  I've had to let some other fields pass me by, as it 
were.  Discourse grammar tends to be one of them, so I may 
spend a fair amount of time asking for clarification.  If that's 
acceptable to you (and whoever else might want to dive in), let's go 
for it.  What do you think?

> By the way, I enjoyed your article on David's mourning.  You may be correct 
> in suggesting
> punctuation changes there.

Thanks.  I'm looking forward to interacting with you on some texts.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.