Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Hi Doug,
> Dave,
> 
> Doug here.  Just a few comments to keep the ball rolling.
> 
> On Tue, 11 May 1999 06:41:41 -0700 "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
> writes:
> > Peter wrote:
> > > 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.
> > 
> > That's not how I defined the most basic verb form.
> It may not be how you defined the most basic form but was it not the
> criterion by which you judged qatal the most basic form?  That's
> certainly my impression based on what you had written previously.

Nope.  That wasn't the criterion.

> > > 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.
> > 
> > Then what would you say is the foundational form of the verb?
> I don't want to sound like a schoolkid in a fight here, so forgive the
> wording here, but "you started it".  Peter is simply saying here that
> he's not convinced qatal is the fundamentally the most basic form.  It
> was your assertion that it is; to play the skeptic about your assertion
> does not require me or anyone else to have a positive assertion for the
> 'most basic form'. 

I find simply saying "I disagree" to be quite unsatisfying; offering an 
alternative advances discussion much more effectively, at least 
IMO.

> > > 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 
> > 
> > Rare in all possible types of ancient Hebrew, or just in the 
> > specialized type of literature that we work with?  The nature of the 
> > 
> > corpus has to be considered as well.
> Do you know what other types of ancient Hebrew we have to work with?!  We
> have what we have; it seems speculation beyond this doesn't really
> advance things.  Am I overlooking something?

The question is, are we right in building a syntax of Hebrew based 
on material that is predominantly either narrative or poetry and 
saying "Since this is the most prevalent form in what we have, it 
must be the most fundamental" or do we need to do some 
extrapolation and try to determine, using principles of linguistic 
science (in this case, syntax, and in my case, syntax from a 
transformational approach) which forms are base-generated and 
which are derived?  The former amounts to counting, little more.  
As a grammarian, I find that less than satisfactory.

> I passed on the last round since I'm not 'up' on Peter's qatal-weqatal
> theory anyway.

Apparently I'm not either! :-)

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.