Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Peter and Randall,



>peter kirk asked a good question
>why didn't anyone resopnd?
>
>>How about comparing Exodus 26 and 36 (from v.8), which are closely
>>parallel except in tense/aspect? The former has lots of weqatals, also
>>yiqtols, the latter wayyiqtols and qatals.
>
>i suppose the problem is that it is too clear?
>the semantic Tense/Aspect/Mood (not the pragmatics) of vayyiqtol and qatal
>are similar.
>and
>the semantic TAM (not the pragmatics) of veqatal and yiqtol are similar.
>
>braxot
>randall buth
>

The two chapters show the normal way to express a past situation and a
future situation. A clause in the  past situation starts with a wayyiqtol
and a qatal is used when an element comes before the verb. A clause in the
future situation starts with a weqatal and a yiqtol is used when something
comes before the verb. There are at least two possible interpretations: (1)
The author was forced to choose the particular forms because of their
semantic meaning ("The English verb "went" could for instance not occur in
a main clause with future meaning), or (2) The choice of forms is due to
linguistic convention. How can we know?

Semantic meaning is according to Grice' s principle *uncancelable*, i.e. if
weqatal is a future tense, a weqatal is always future tense (I leave out
wayyiqtol in this context). The RSV translates 484 weqatals as past tense,
and this fact alone is enough to falsify any claim of weqatal being a
future tense.  In Ex 36: 29,30 and 38 we find three weqatals with past
meaning. A challenge to those saying that qatals with enclitic we with past
meaning are not weqatals: Please design a method which is not circular to
differentiate between the two!

But how can we explain the choice of forms which seems so neat if wayyiqtol
and yiqtol has the same semantic meaning and this is also true with qatal
and weqatal? If the prefix-forms represents the imperfective aspect and the
suffix-forms the perfective aspects, and aspects are defined as subjective
viewpoints rather than "the inner temporal constituency" of events, we have
a very fine foundation. This would mean that the aspects do not give any
information about the objective nature of an event or about its relation to
time, deictic and non-deictic, but the aspects are used together with many
other factors to convey particular signals of meaning to the receptor. This
will also explain the hundreds of examples where one aspect is used in one
clause and the other aspect in the paralell clause without any obvious
difference in meaning.

If it is true that aspects do not have any intrinsic semantic meaning but
are just viewpoints or a way to focus on something (although the aspects
give powerful semantic signals in *combination* with other factors), they
can naturally be used with past, present and future meaning. But how then
do we get the harmonious picture that we see in Ex 26 and 36? There are
some constraints which may contribute to order: (1) In clauses where one or
more words occur before the verb, both weqatal and wayyiqtol cannot be
used. (2) There is evidently a linguistic convention that a verb in
sentence initial position is modal. A qatal can have this position in
direct speech and also in a few other instances, but this is not normal.
This means that the sentence initial verbs in Ex 26 and 36 can neither be
yiqtols or qatals. Thus only weqatals, wayyiqtols (and weyiqtols) were
available as sentenc initial verbs and only yiqtols and qatals were
available as medial verbs. What evidently became a linguistic convention in
Hebrew was to use wayyiqtol and qatal in past contexts and yiqtol and
weqatal in future contexts. The choice need not be purely accidental. Even
though each aspect has no intrinsic semantic meaning, the scope of the
perfective one accords better with past time than with present/future, and
the scope of the imperfective accords better with present/future.

Even though the forms do not signal any tense, by following the patterns of
a linguistic convention, time is indirectly signalled by generally using
the same pattern for the same time (we also have another pattern:
imperatives followed by weyiqtols or yiqtols followed by weyiqtols).
Because the nature of the pattern is pragmatic rather than semantic, there
is noise in the system (this would hardly occur if the system was
semantic). How do you for instance explain the weyiqtol at the beginning of
Ex 26:24? It is hardly an error because the corresponding verse in chapter
36 is equally "strange", beginning with a weqatal with past meaning and
continuing with the same yiqtol with past meaning which 26:24 uses with
future meaning.

To illustrate that it is not strange that morphs or morphemes can be void
of semantic meaning or at least that we do not need this meaning in
translation or even understand it, I refer to Sumerian. In that agglutinate
language the verb root is preceded by several prefixes and alse followed by
some affixes. One of the prefixes (e.g. "mu" or "i") is not understood and
simply ignored in translation. The verbal root has two forms, hamtu and
maru. In the UrIII period, for example, the maru form has almost always
past meaning, and in the verbs with past meaning in main sentences in the
royal inscriptions, the mu-prefix is almost always used, but the
Sumerologists are more cautions than their Hebrew collegues, and will not
on this basis decide whether hamtu and maru represent tense, aspect or
Aktionsart or whether mu represent past tense.

I look forward to a comment on my static examples from Joshua.


Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo