Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Dear Rolf,

I am not sure why you addressed this one to me as I am not now one of 
those your refer to who "hold the view that verbs have different 
meanings in prose... and poetry". My suggestion is rather that verb 
forms are used in different ways in different discourse types e.g. 
narrative, instruction, exhortation, prediction, and that the 
prose/poetry distinction is minor.

However, I cannot let your number 3 stand. The claim some seem to have 
made is that verbs have different tense and aspect meanings in prose 
and poetry; no-one has I think claimed any differences in other 
components of meaning. So your "apart from tense and aspect" is an 
attempt to decide the question by a priori assertion. Or to put it 
another way, your argument is equivalent to answering a statement 
"ball A is different from ball B because A is red and B is blue" by 
saying "apart from colour, what difference is there? - if none, A and 
B must be identical". I agree that there is a danger of circular 
argument here, but I think you should give to those who disagree with 
you the chance to make present a non-circular argument for tense and 
aspect differences.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[4]: Tidbits from Ruth
Author:  furuli AT online.no at internet 
Date:    04/05/1999 10:37


Peter Kirk wrote:
<snip>

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