Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Peter Kirk wrote:

>
>Thank you, and sorry if I misrepresented you. I think we need to avoid
>a priori assumptions in either direction. Your first paragraph is
>certainly a worthy aim. My contribution on Psalm 78 in fact
>demonstrated just the opposite of any "claim that a wayyiqtol or a
>qatal has a different meaning in poetry than in prose". Maybe the
>comparison needs to be between prose non-narrative and poetic
>non-narrative of otherwise similar genre, if we can find something
>like that. Presumably there is poetic exhortation as well as prose
>exhortation to be looked at. We can then compare the verb forms in the
>poetic exhortation with those described for prose by Niccacci, Rocine
>etc.
>

Dear Peter,

Before we suggest a new classification of language I would like to ask a
few questions. It seems that several members of this list hold the view
that verbs have different meanings in prose (or narrative) and poetry. I
suspect that the primary reason for this view is that many verbs in
non-narrative texts contradict the person's grammatical model for narrative
texts, thus it is in principle an ad hoc explanation.

Those who have data showing that this is wrong, please stand up and defend
your case by answering the following questions:

(1) It is claimed that verbs also have different meanings in prose and
poetry in other languages. Which languages?
(2) In the languages where the difference in meaning is supposed to occur,
exactly what is the difference? Is the difference found in main clauses or
only in irreal clauses. Are there languages where poetry generally changes
the "tense" of a verb? (NB: I am not speaking about idioms.)
(3) Regarding Hebrew, which data apart from tense and aspect (which cannot
be used in the explanation because of circularity) show that particular
verbs have one meaning in prose (or narrative) and another in poetry.
Exactly what is the difference in meaning and by help of which parameters
can it be pinpointed?

If these questions cannot be satisfactorily answered, there is just one
conclusion that can be drawn: The fundamental conjugations in Hebrew, be
they two or four, have the same meaning in any genre. Honestly speaking, I
am quite bored by references such as "But this is poetry", "This is this.",
and "This is that.". Please stand up and produce some evidence!




Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo