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b-hebrew - Re[2]: Volitive weyiqtol

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  • From: peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG
  • To: sbfnet AT netvision.net.il
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re[2]: Volitive weyiqtol
  • Date: Fri, 07 May 1999 18:13:53 -0400


Dear Prof. Niccacci,

You wrote to Lee Martin, "weyiqtol continues a preceding volitive
verbform--i.e. cohortative, imperative, or jussive-- in the sense
that it carries on its volitive force."

Would it be correct to rephrase and generalise this "we+volitive
verbform continues a previous volitive verbform..."? - with the
understanding that a volitive verbform is cohortative in 1st person,
imperative in 2nd person, and jussive (i.e. apocopated yiqtol) in the
3rd person. This seems to be consistent with the examples you and
others quote. This explains why there are no second person weyiqtols
following imperatives: there is no second person jussive, the
imperative is used instead.

I did a search on all 2nd person weyiqtol forms and came up with an
interesting result. In all of the historical books I found only
W:TAG."YD in Exodus 19:3, the double W:TI$:MA( W:TOW$IYA( in 2 Chron
20:9, and W:T")FM"NW. in 2 Chron 20:20 [also W.T:HIY in poetry 2 Kings
19:25 || Is. 37:26]. But there many examples in the poetic and
prophetic books.

Presumably TO)MAR... W:TAG."YD in Exodus 19:3 must be considered
non-volitive and instructional. In 2 Chronicles 20:9 the chain
apparently starts with a cohortative and so this may be volitive. In 2
Chronicles 20:20, we have a clear example of an imperative being
followed by a 2nd person weyiqtol, but unfortunately it is not clear
whether the volitive force is continued. I guess it would be safer to
consider none of these cases volitive. But then it would be
interesting to look also at the poetical examples.

Peter Kirk






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