Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Studium Biblicum Franciscanum <sbfnet AT netvision.net.il>]

 Dear Moon,

Thank you for your comment.
I think you've put things in the best way.

Now I come to your question regarding the difference beteen x-qatal and (sentence-initial) qatal, on the one side, and x-yiqtol and yiqtol, on the other.
Briefly, I note some facts and draw some conclusions:

1) No historical-narrative text begins with sentence-initial qatal; one finds instead x-qatal (e.g. Gen 1:1 *bere'$it bara' 'elohim*); on the contrary, a direct-speech narrative begins either with qatal (e.g. *nilxamti* in 2Sam 12:27) or with x-qatal (e.g. Gen 47:1 *'abi we'exay ... ba'u*). Further both the direct-speech qatal and x-qatal correspond to a wayyiqtol in historical-narrative of the same event; contrast 2Sam 12:27 versus 12:26 *wayyillaxem*, and Gen 47:1 versus 46:6 *wayyabo'u*.
This means, first, that qatal is a mainline verbform in direct speech, not in historical narrative, in which x-qatal is the offline counterpart of mainline wayyiqtol. Second, that at the beginning of a direct-speech narrative qatal and x-qatal are both mainline, and therefore basically interchangeable, since both are attested as direct-speech counterpart of narrative wayyiqtol.

2) Initial yiqtol is attested in direct speech, not in historical narrative. It has volitive (or jussive) force. The clearest case is a text that I mentioned in a previous post, i.e. Num 6:24-26, where jussive yiqtol's are continued by weyiqtol's, also jussive. There the yiqtol and weyiqtol forms are indeed jussive, also morphologically, see *ya'er" in v. 25 and *weyasem* in v. 26.
However, clear cases of mainline jussive x-yiqtol are also attested, e.g. Gen 37:27 *weyadenu 'al-tehi bo*.
Therefore the situation of jussive yiqtol and x-yiqtol is similar to that of direct-speech qatal and x-qatal.
In historical narrative only x-yiqtol is attested. It is a offline construction with frequentative function, i.e. indicating custom, habit, or description, see e.g. Gen 2:6 *we'ed ya`aleh*.

Peace and all good,

Alviero Niccacci



> On  03/14/99 (Re: Tilburg Paper (To Alviero)) you wrote:


> Dear Alviero,
> 
> I thank you for your inspirational insights to BH. Especially
> I appreciate your methodological starting point: Try to link
> forms and their functions in the context rather than analyzing
> the "semantics" of the forms, which is very hard to do even for 
> native speakers of the language. This seems to be especially
> appropriate when we study dead languages. 

> Also let me ask some questions about your recent post. You said:
> 
< . . . .>
> 
> I see the difference between x-qatal and weqatal, and between x-yiqtol and
> weyiqtol. But not between x-qatal and qatal, and between x-yiqtol and

> yiqtol. I thought "x" refers to whatever goes bewteen we and yiqtol???
> And could you please explain the difference between x-qatal and qatal
> and between x-yiqtol and yiqtol?
> 
> Sincerely
> 
> Moon
> Moon-Ryul Jung
> Asssistant Professor
> Dept of Computer Science
> Soongsil University,
> Seoul, KOrea