Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Galia Hatav <ghatav AT aall.ufl.edu>]

Dear Paul Zellmer,

You wrote:

>(Ms. Hatav, please forgive me, but I don't know how to address you, be it
>Doctor,
>Professor, or whatever.)
        "Galia" would do.
>
>Galia Hatav wrote:
>
>> A sequential clause
>> would not appear in ACTUAL sequence if the discourse in which it appears is
>> irrelevant, e.g., in lists such as (1) below:
>>         1. A: What did you do last night?
>>            B: A lot. I did my grading, I wrote the abstract for the
>> conference,
>>               I answered all ny e-mail letters, and even managed to play
>>with
>>               the kids.
>>
>> Since the answer of B in (1) is a list, not a narrative, the order of the
>> events is not relevant, and therefore potentially sequential verbs (WP in
>> BH) may (would?) appear, although they don't form an actual sequence.
>
>I admit that, off my head, I do not have any examples to back up this
>thought, but I
>distinctly recall being taught that a list of this type would not use the
>wayyiqtol.
>Rather, it would use, in the terms of the instruction, a
>"waw-correlative," which, of
>course, would be a qatal form.  Is what I was taught incorrect.  (It could
>well be,
>since we are talking the views of the mid-1970's.)  Does anyone have a BH
>example?

        I tried to think of lists myself. I came up with genalogies such as
Gen 11, but they, too, have a form of a narrative. If I find other examples
I'll write to you again.
>
>> Again, within the line of Washburn (1994), it seems to me that WP has in it
>> the component *yiqtol*, which I show to be modal. The notion of modality I
>> adopt is the one suggested by modal logic: a modal clause quantifies over
>> possible worlds (PW).  Now, *wayyiqtol* itself is understood to report
>> NON-modal events. How can we explain it, then, to consists of a modal form?
>> This is my hypothesis: The form of *wayyiqtol* consists of three morphemes
>> (not just two, as Washburn suggests): W-AY-YIQTOL.  The morpheme *W* builds
>> a new R-time (which makes the form sequential in the sense described
>> above).  The morphem *AY* (i.e., the vowel patah and the dagesh geminating
>> the prefix) specifies the PW to be the actual one (I'll call it AW).
>
>There's a bit of a problem here.  If *W* is the morpheme that builds a new
>R-time, how
>is it distinguished from the *W* that is used to form the weqatal, which
>does not
>build a new R-time?  Or the *W* that joins the X-qatal to the discourse?
>I admit this
>distinct morpheme is possible, but, without the indication that the BH
>speakers saw
>such a distinction in the *W* alone among the various forms, IMO it is
>unlikely.

        Re weqatal - I believe it also builds an R-time, but in the modal
material. So this is not a problem. However, w-X-qatal as well as *W* in
front of qotel or NPs form a problem. I am considetring different
hypotheses to account for the problem. For the time being I am going to
adopt Jouon's explanation for the *WAW*. Jouon distinguishes between two
kinds of WAW: waw for coordination and what he calls waw energetic. The
latter corresponds to my "R-time builder WAW". Jouon compares this to
Arabic. In Arabic there are two morphemes to connect sentences and other
elements in disocurse: *WA*, which merely coordinates sentences, NPs etc.,
and *FA* which imposes sequentiality to the sentences it connects.  In BH
the two morphemes are homonyms - both are *w*.
Now what I suggest is that only the energetic *waw* may be attached to the
verbs; and vice versa - it cannot be attached to nominals (or non-verbs in
general).  This would be very different from the situation in Arabic. My
colleague at UF, Mohammad Mohammad, told me that *FA* may be attached not
only to sentences (or clauses), but also to NPs, also eliciting
sequentiality. He suggests the following minimla pair:
        1. a. Mary wa-John wa-Lucie went to the beach.
           b. Mary fa-John fa-Lucie went to the beach.
The coordinated sentence in (1a) may be ambiguous between: 1)one event -
all three went together to the beach; 2) They went separately - first Mary,
then John and then Lucie. 3) They went separately - but in some other order
than the reporting clauses (first John or first Lucie).  In contrast, (1b)
must be interpreted as reporting a sequence of events: Mary went to the
beach, then John went and then Lucie.  Why would BH be different than
Arabic? First, languges do differ (e.g., we have more verb patterns, i.e.,
BINYANIM. in Arabic than in Hebrew). A better approach: since the two
morphemes are homophones in BH, the language developed a device to
distinguish between them syntacticly: the one which corresponds to FA
appears only with verb, and the one corresponds to the Arabic WA appears
only with non-verbs.  I am hoping to be able to do better than this and
find a morphological (or morphophonological) rule which will explain that.

>
>Also, in order for one to assign the meaning "specificially the actual
>world" to any
>characters, do we not either have to see cases where there are similar
>meanings when
>that proposed morpheme is attached to another form, or at least find the
>same form
>without the proposed morpheme *and* without that significance.  To say, as
>you did
>later, that the *AY* has the same result as adding the definite article to
>a noun does
>not really demonstate a thing, since the forms are not even close.

        I am not sure I understand. The common denominator to bare NPs and
to Yiqtol, according to what I am suggesting, is indefinitness. Does this
answer your question?
>
>Your other explanations in the post did indeed make clear the meaning of
>your term
>"potential."  Thanks much.
>
>Paul
>---
>Paul and Dee Zellmer, Jimmy Guingab, Geoffrey Beltran
>Ibanag Translation Project
>Cabagan, Philippines
>
>zellmer AT faith.edu.ph