Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Well, at risk of getting out of depth, let me try to answer Rolf. He 
wrote:

"... As an example, compare Leviticus 14:6 and 51. In both verses do we 
find LQX with future meaning,  in v 6 as a yiqtol and in v 51 as a weqatal. 
It seems to me that the reason for the difference is that "the bird" is 
fronted in v 6 because of emphasis. Both verses also have another weqatal 
with future meaning, which is not forbidde by the word order, and which 
also points in the mentioned direction.

...

Is it true that to study the text above the clause level demands several 
more assumptions than a study of small/the smallest linguistic units? Is it 
true that it is much more difficult to test conclusions based upon the 
study of big chunks of text than those reached on the basis of smaller 
units? If not, please tell me how we can test conclusions drawn about the 
meaning of the Hebrew conjugations on the basis of discourse analysis 
alone. For instance, is the view that weqatal has the same meaning as 
yiqtol falsifyable?"

Yes, discourse analysis is difficult and challenging, and it is hard 
to provide convincing proofs. On the other hand, no-one seems to be 
convinced by anyone else's proofs which are argued at the clause 
level. But proof at the discourse level is not impossible in 
principle. Let me show that the view that weqatal has the same meaning 
as yiqtol is indeed falsifiable.

I will refer back to the verses you quote, Lev. 14:6 and 51: a good 
example in which yiqtol and weqatal appear in a very similar discourse 
context and the difference, apart from the substitution of tenses, is 
only in the word order. In an ideal test the word order would also be 
the same. Now I agree with your analysis that these two verses are 
synonymous except that there is extra emphasis on the bird in v.6, and 
so this example supports the hypothesis that weqatal has the same 
meaning as yiqtol. But the hypothesis is falsifiable, as these two 
verses (or another similar pair) could in principle have different 
meanings, and if they did the hypothesis would be falsified (except 
that I would add various caveats about needing more than one example 
in real language and where texts may have been corrupted etc).

There is perhaps a problem here: if the two verses had different 
meanings, how could we know it? I suppose the answer to that is that 
there could be a clear tradition of translation, comment etc going 
back say to second temple times (when b-Hebrew was still just about a 
living language) giving contrasting interpretations of the two verses. 
As far as I know there is nothing like that in the example given e.g. 
LXX translates both verbs LHMPsETAI.

Peter Kirk