Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Rolf wrote:
> Dear Lee and Dave:
> 
> >Lee,
> >> Dear Dave,
> >> Rolf Furuli says wayyiqtol is imperfective (tenseless);
> >> Vince DeCaen says it is modal/sequential;
> >> Randall Buth says it is perfective (past tense);
> >> Bryan Rocine says it is imperfective/sequential;
> >> Many traditional scholars say it is equivalent to qatal.
> >> Niccacci focuses on discourse function rather than aspect and tense.
> >
> >If this summary doesn't demonstrate our total confusion about the
> >Hebrew verbal system, nothing will!  Obviously, we all still have a
> >lot of work to do.
> 
> When there is so much confusion, why don't you use modern linguistic
> principles to create a model that can differentiate between what is
> "semantic meaning" and what is "conversational pragmatic implicature" in
> each verb form?  You can get such a model for less than $ 70, because Mari
> Broman Olsen has outlined an excellent model which can be applied to Hebrew
> verbs.

That's pretty much what I try to do with my transformational 
approach.  Can you give us some more information about this 
"model" you speak of?  It sounds fascinating.

> >I believe that Vince has said that the Wa prefix signals sequence, and the
> >shortened
> >form proves modality.  Rolf has said that the Wa was invented by the
> >Masoretes. I'm
> >not sure what other people think.
> 
> Just to avoid misunderstanding: I do not think that the Masoretes
> manipulated the text in any way: they were extremely careful copyists. But
> their pointing of the forms that we call "wayyiqtol" which evidently was
> done on a non-grammatical foundation, were by the first Hebrew grammarian
> from the 9th/10th century onward interpreted in a way that made wayyiqtol
> into a distinctive conjugation. If this is correct, the Masoretes, by
> following their phonetic laws, unintentionally laid the foundation for a
> four-component verbal model, but they did not invent it.

Just to clarify in my own mind: does this mean you don't believe 
the WP is a distinct verbal form?  Where do you believe the 
Masoretes got their phonetic patterns from?  Also, how close 
would you say your view is to Loprieno's?

> >I'm going to go out on a limb here and state something that I
> >haven't said publicly before, but have held for years: I don't think
> >there truly is such a thing as the weqatal.  It has no distinct form,
> >very unlike the WP (except for the Masoretic accentuation, which
> >may or may not be accurate) and can be explained just as easily
> >as a simple qatal that happens to occur at the beginning of a
> >clause with a conjunction.  We are told in our baby Hebrew
> >classes that there are examples of W+qatal that are not weqatals,
> >yet we're supposed to accept that somehow somebody knows the
> >difference.  I don't buy it.  As you pointed out, the "conversive" idea
> >is more than a little suspect, and I tend to wonder if the medieval
> >grammarians didn't come up with the 4-part verbal system with two
> >unconverted and two converted forms for the sake of symmetry.  In
> >any case, I don't see enough phonological or syntactic evidence to
> >convince me that there really is a "converted" qatal or a qatal with
> >"waw-consecutive."  Now I'll duck...
> 
> 
> Some statisticts: Looking at qatals with prefixed waw in 1st and 2nd person
> singular, I found 1637 examples in BHS. Of these, 1222 had ultimate stress
> (including 83 of the lamed aleph and lamed he groups), and 415 had
> penultimate stress (including 278 of the lamed aleph and lamed he groups).
> Of the verbs with ultimate stress 1082 evidently have future meaning, and
> of the verbs with penultimate stress 148 evidently have future meaning.
> 
> The fact that 12 per cent of the weqatals with penultimate stress do not
> have a future meaning and that 36 per cent of the weqatals with penultimate
> stress have future meaning accords with Dave's suggestions above.

Fascinating (and encouraging!).  Are the details published 
somewhere?  Part of the problem with my view of the WP is that I 
have yet to really investigate the other "tenses" (for lack of a better 
term) to any real degree.  This material looks like a good way to 
give my research a much-needed "jump-start."




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