Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

I agree here with Doug, and want to add some further points addressed 
to Dave:

1) If you define the most basic verb form as the one with fewest 
affixes, well, in very many languages (arguably including Hebrew), 
that is the imperative. But imperatives generally also have 
non-standard word order, subject deletion and all sorts of special 
features which make them unsuitable for judging basic word order. So I 
think your methodology needs to be reexamined.

2) I am also far from convinced that the qatal form is fundamentally 
the most basic form; perhaps it only appears so because of the 
accidental null form of the 3rd person singular masculine suffix. In 
Arabic there is a final short a in the equivalent qatala form, which 
is deleted in Hebrew by a purely phonological process, if I am not 
mistaken.

3) For the sake of argument, let us look at clauses in which the verb 
form is qatal. A typical Hebrew clause consists of a conjunction 
(asyndeton is rare, and by far the most common conjunction is we-), a 
subject, an object, and oblique elements in addition to a verb - all 
elements are optional. In sentences in which the verb comes first, the 
conjunction is attached to the verb. Thus for a true comparison 
between verb-first clauses and verb-second clauses one needs to look 
at weqatal forms as equivalent to qatal forms, or ignore all clauses 
with the conjunction we-.

If you, Dave, have a published paper justifying your arguments, please 
let us have the reference.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[3]: BH, Jouon on syntax?
Author:  doug.kasten AT juno.com at internet
Date:    10/05/1999 17:40


BHListers,

On Mon, 10 May 1999 13:41:31 -0700 "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net> 
writes:
> Peter wrote:
> > Would you care to justify the following, Dave? What is your 
> evidence
> > that wayyiqtol is "clearly a transformed-and-moved constituent"?

snip

> Syntactically,
> it only makes sense to begin with the most basic form of the verb, 
> which is the qatal.  All other forms, including those with W-, are 
> made by adding something to it, so if we want to discover the
> "basic" word order in Hebrew we will want to start with the qatal 
> and see if we can discover what "normal" word order is in clauses
> using it.  I think it's safe to say that SVO is the general order of 
> the
> day in such clauses.  At this level, markedness (whether in
> narrative, poetry or whatever) really has little or nothing to do 
> with it.

Dave,

I'm not saying I agree with your assertion that qatal is the 'most basic 
form' of the verb, though depending how you define 'most basic' I'd 
easily grant you the point.  Now that I've taken care of my 
non-agreement, I'd like to move on to my disagreement.

I don't think it follows that, given you have isolated the most basic 
verbal form in qatal, the sentences in which it's used necessarily mark 
the most basic word order.  Would you please offer some kind of support 
for what you apparently take as another 'given'?  It'd be helpful because 
right now I'm not buying.

Peace,
Doug

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