Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Randall wrote:
> {bryan rocine wrote:}
> >For instance, I interpret Randall as
> >asserting  that weqatal cannot be a continuation form in Jdg 11:8.  I say
> >that it is.  It does not continue shavnu, of course. 
> 
> of course!?
> shavnu is exactly what vehalaxta continues!

Uh-uh.  Shavnu is incidental and subordinate, as the LFK"N that 
introduces it shows.

> vehalaxta continues the sentence with the thematic material.

Again, I have to disagree.  Jephtha's question breaks their request - 
basically he interrupted them - and shavnu answers his objection, 
or more properly, brushes it aside.  Only then does the "thematic 
material" continue.

> of course, vehalaxta does not continue the TAM of shavnu. vehalaxta has the
> opposite TAM.
> that is why BH has two sequential forms. if the author of ju 11.8 wanted to
> continue with thematic/sequential material of the same TAM as shavnu then
> he would have said 'vattelex'.

This is hardly the case.  Vehalakta picks up the thread of their 
request, using the same two verbs as v.6.  Again, this all shows 
that (laken) shavnu is incidental to the main thread, and the verb 
form says nothing about whether it is or it isn't.  The explicit laken 
is what marks it as such.

> ju 13.2 gives another example of this just a few paragraphs later in
> judges:
> 
> and the angel said to her:
> look
> at `aqara   (you are childless)
> velo yaladt  (and you have not given birth)[suffix TAM marks past here]
> veharit (and you will be pregnant)[veqatal marks thematic material and uses
> same TAM as a prefix would have]
> veyaladt ben (and you will give birth to a son) [ditto]

I'd be interested in Bryan's take on this one, as well as Vince's.  I 
see a change of tense, but that's all.  It's obvious that a WP 
couldn't have been used in place of yaladt, because a WP can't 
ben negated, nor can a weqatal.  Hence, the fact of negation is the 
main thing that seems to call for a change of verb form there.

> in narrative this thematicity can be seen in verses like 
> isaiah 6.1
> bishnat mot ha-melex `uzziah    (in the year of uzziah's death) [not a
> clause]
> va'er'e et adonai     ('and i saw') [thematic material with TAM equal to
> suffix tense]
>     (cf. moabite line 5 and 30 for similar construction with vayyiqtol.)

I don't see any real evidence of the equivalence of "TAM" here.  A 
WP after a temporal clause is about as common a construction in 
BH as anything else we can find.  I suspect the key to its syntax is 
to be found in that fact, not in TAM.

> had the suffix tense been used "ra'iti" the material would not have been as
> foregrounded, pragmatically.
> Here, the "seeing" is a salient event not the background/preparation for
> another event.

Again, it's common for a WP to follow a temporal clause in 
narrative, so I doubt this construction is marked in any particular 
way.

> 
> when a sequential form is desired with the TAM of a yiqtol, then a veqatal
> is used.
> when a sequential form is desired with the TAM of a qatal, then a vayyiqtol
> is used.
> the previous verb or material is irelevant because each sequential form
> carries its own TAM.

To my mind, this has not been shown from the material above.

> (that is why books can begin with vayehi. the 'and' may suggest that this
> is a frozen form but it still carries its own past/perfective TAM.)

This is considerably less than satisfying...

> the choice of whether to use a sequential form or non-sequential form is
> directly related to 'discourse'/'textlinguistics'[i.e. pragmatics]. 
> the choice of which TAM to use is directly related to semantics. 

So what about all the places where the WP is not sequential?  
Explanations of this phenomenon are what ultimately made me 
reject the traditional 4-form model, and I haven't seen anything so 
far that is persuading me to go back.


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