Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Rolf,


>I found your post very interesting, and appreciate both your sound
>linguistic comments and your points about modality (something which I also
>have voiced, both in my mag. art. thesis and on b-hebrew). I have not yet
>read your book, but I have ordered it, and I look forward to reading it

        Thank you so much. How can I get an access to you thesis?
>
>I have two questions about W-AY-YIQTOL. My view (so far) is that tense is
>not grammaticalised in BH, and that all yiqtols with and without wa are
>imperfective (not the "English" brand of imperfectivity) and that all
>qatals with and without we are perfective. The w of wayyiqtol is the simple
>conjunction, and the rest of the wayyiqtol is a function of the choice of
>the apocopated form and the phonetic rules used by the Masoretes.

        I am not sure what you mean by "tense"? The subject of temporality
is so confusing that I try to make sure I understand the terminology of the
work in question, before doing anything with it. I personally use the term
"tense" strictly for verb morphology referring to past, future and present.
The terms "perfective" and "imperfective" I consider to do with Aspect
rather than tense.
        I am not sure either what you mean by "imperfective" and
"perfective". I consider qatal to be PERFECT (not perfective). I have to
understand your ideas better in order to be able to form an opinion.


>(1) Can you point to a single function of wayyiqtol which cannot be
>accounted for by the view that wayyiqtol is the conjunction w + yiqtol?

        First I am not calling the *w* conjunction. I see it as a
reference-time builder.  There are at least two cases where wayyiqtol
clauses do not build a new R-time. One: in formulas such as "waydabber
wayyomer" and hendiadies such as
"wayyimshexu wayya'alu". The other case is with paraphrases: The narrator
starts a story, stops and starts it again to provide some detail he did not
mention the first time. There are also counterexamples which I cannot
lexplain. (My statistical counting shows 3% of such cases.)

>(2) I have seen many attempts to give a diachronic explanation of the
>WAYY-element of wayyiqtol, but not a single one which is historically and
>linguistically satisfactory. Can you say something about the background of
>the W-AY-elements you mention?

        I usually analyse the data synchronically. However, it seems that
with respect to this question a diachronic consideration would be in place.
I have been thinking in the lines of what happened to Arabic. In Classical
Arabic there is only one form YIQTOL (or more precisely for Arabic it is
YAQTUL, if I am not mistaken), used to express non-modal as well as modal
situations. The dialects which evolved from Classical Arabic developed
different (free) morphemes, e.g., *ga'ed* in Tunisian Arabic appearing
before a verb in yiqtol, usually explained as making the situation
concomitant with the speech time. It seems to me that this is not the
adequate generalization, and what happens is specifying the possible world
to be the actual one. That this is the more accurate generalization is
demonstrated by the fact that you must add the morpheme *ga'ed* in
sentences referring to past (non-modal) situations too. Maybe this is what
happened in Hebrew, too. Bauer (1910) believes that in earlier stages we
had only yiqtol to express everything.
>
>Let us consider a biblical example: 2 kings 20:7 and Isaiah 38:21, which
>occur in parallel accounts. Verses 21,22 in Isaiah 38 are clearly
>"misplaced" and should occur between verses 6 and 7. This is seen because 2
>kings 20:6 has the same thought as Isaiah 38:6 and Isaiah 38:7 is the
>answer to the question asked in Isaiah 38:22, which is also the case with 2
>Kings 20:8 and 9. Both verses starts with a wayyiqtol with past meaning
>"Isaiah said". Isaiah uses an imperative while 2 Kings uses a yiqtol, both
>with modal meaning. Three wayyiqtols follow in the Isaiah text and two
>weyiqtols in 2 Kings. Is the temporal setting different? Both according to
>Isaiah 38:22 and 2 Kings 20:8, Hezekiah was not actually healed, and this
>suggests a future/modal setting for both 2 Kings 20:7 and Isaiah 38:21. The
>versions tend to agree with this setting. Regarding the last verb xyh,
>according to my notes which I cannot check at the moment, we find the
>following renderings:
>2 Kings 20:7; LXX: future, Peshitta: waw + participle, Vulgate:  perfect,
>Targum: waw + perfect, Ge'ez: waw + subjunctive
>Isaiah 38:21; adjective + future, Peshitta: waw + participle, Vulgate,
>present passive; Targum: waw + imperfect, Ge'ez: waw + subjunctive.
>The problems of differentiating between weyiqtol and wayyiqtol in unpointed
>texts is also adequately illustrated by these two verses. Just delete the
>vowels, and try to find the time setting without them.
>
>To the TAM-niks on the list: would you argue for a similar time setting, or
>that Isaiah uses a future/modal setting and that 2 Kings uses a past
>setting?

        First I would like to mention that so far I have studied only the
books attributed to the First Temples (Gen. through Kings) and only the
narrative portions of those book. Isiah would not fall into my corpus.
Having said that, however, it seems to that you are right. 2Kgs refers to
actual events happening in our actual real world; hence the interpretation
of past time evnets. Isiah refers to what will happen - modal situations.
(Future is a subcategory of modals)
>
Galia
>
>
>Rolf Furuli
>Lecturer in Semitic languages
>University of Oslo
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