Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Paul Zellmer <zellmer AT cag.pworld.net.ph>]

[My apologies to the list.  I tried hard to find easy ways to cut down on the 
size of
this post, but most of what I tried either left my points unclear or omitted 
something
that I wanted to make sure was explicitly stated.]

Rolf,

I had a response basically drafted when Peter sent his response.  I'll try to 
include
some thoughts on his comments as well.

Rolf Furuli wrote:

> The first question I must ask is: Who is the target group? The degree of
> literalness depends of the purpose of the translated text. (In order to be
> brief I will not elucidate this). I view the words of a language
> (particularly verbs and nouns) as semantic signals of concepts in the minds
> of those speaking the language.  Each concept has a core which is quite
> clear but becomes fuzzy towards its edges. The context does not generate
> new meaning, but illuminates which side of each concept the author wants to
> make visible. Thus the combination of words in clauses conveys meaning.
>

Thanks for this attempt.  As I suspected, our basic thoughts are not so far 
apart.  It
is apparently our supposed "perceptions" of the other persons view!

Do you think, Rolf, that poetry may include a tendency to move toward these 
"fuzzy"
edges?  I know, when I am trying to express myself to non-native English 
speakers,
that I have to be careful is to use prose rather than poetry, literal rather 
than
figurative, in order for them to clearly understand the message I'm trying to
communicate.  But I can wax poetic with other English speakers, especially 
those of
the dialects that I learned to speak.

> Honestly speaking, I see little use in starting an analysis by  classifying
> the text in "narrative" and "discourse", and further in "hortatory
> discourse" etc (to see verbal patterns, however, the categories are
> useful). The writers were not aware of such categories and did not arrange
> their texts and choose his verbs in the light of such categories.

I humbly disagree with you (and, apparently, Peter) here.  Using an English 
example
(and recognizing that it will never 100% correlate to the Hebrew), when I am 
in a
hortatory "mode," I switch automatically to the imperative (which only 
implies the
subject "you"), my prepositions change, and even, to some extent, my word 
order.  I
may not be thinking the term, "hortatory," but I am very much aware of the 
concept.
And while my switch may be automatic now, this is a conditioned response that 
is the
result of past training.  Therefore it might be considered a form of 
deliberate
choice.

> However, the writers arranged their text on the basis of emphasis <snip>, 
> on the
> basis of thematic roles; the semantic relationship between the agent and 
> the patient
> <snip>, on the basis of theme/rheme (old and new information) and on the 
> basis of
> definiteness and indefiniteness (mass/count nouns, singular/plural, 
> article/no
> article) and on the basis of mood, etc.

You can come up with all these bases, and yet you insist that discourse-type 
was not
one basis for their decisions????  It would appear on the surface that your
predisposition against anything but the slightest of benefits of discourse 
analysis
theory is blinding you.

> The basic tool I use when I translate is simply oldfashioned grammatical
> analysis. I take the stems into account to find the thematic roles, look at
> the verbs in the light of the three semantic categories underlying the
> vendlerian categories, dynamicity, durativity, and telicity (which
> particularly is important to differentiate between stative and fientive
> verbs), look at the word order to fine theme/rheme, at the verb form and
> the context to find mood and at the context to fix the time setting. I will
> use Habbakkuk as an example.

[Just a side note: I notice you use "tense-like" terms in your descriptions.  
Is this
not one of the very complaints that you brought up in the responses to your
questions/challenges in the past?]

> What is the setting of Hab 1:5-11? We find the following indications in vv
> 5,6: The prophet speaks about a work which will occur "in their days", and
> HINNE followed by a participle always refer to the future. Thus we have a
> prophecy about the future, and we expect to find verbs with future meaning
> (predicted actions) and present meaning (characteristics).  We cannot
> exclude that verbs with past meaning can occur in such a setting, but that
> would be unusual and we would expect clear markers in such a case.

Imminent future, right?  And how about time-less, or non-time-sensitive, or 
gnomic,
meaning for characteristics.  Present, while the verb form normally used by 
English
and other languages, is by no means required to be used.  I assume that you 
are basing
your combination of predicted forms on past observations, because there is 
nothing
about a future setting that would intuitively require either a description of
characteristics or verbs with past meaning (marked or unmarked).  Also, you 
are
assuming that the "futureness" is transmitted specifically in the verbs, as 
opposed to
some other part of the predicate as a whole.  The case for both of these 
assumptions
is not specifically stated here.  From the base of (imminent) future alone, I 
would
expect the bulk of the predicates to be predicted actions/events.  And, 
unless past
experience told me otherwise, I would also expect descriptions of 
characteristics to
be future as well.  To automatically expect otherwise would have required an 
analysis
which looks very close to discourse analysis.  And you claim not to do that!

> In v 11 we find the adverb )FZ which must refer to a particular 
> time/situation
> either in the past or in the future.

With MIN, it appears to use the speaker's time as the origin and looks 
open-endedly
toward the past; and it can also mark the apodosis in a conditional, but I 
will grant
you that, in this case, it is forward-looking from some point in time.  And 
the
context does indeed indicate future, probably after the events of 6-10.

BTW, who do you see as the subject of verse 11?

<snip>

Anyway, unlike Peter, I'll grant you that this entire passage is probably
future-looking or gnomic.  I will not grant you that gnomic equals present 
time.

> But, if both YIQTOL, WAYYIQTOL, QATAL, and WEQATAL can be translated by the
> same tense, why could not just one verb form be used? As stated several
> times, I see just two forms, a prefix-conjugation and a suffix-conjugation.
> But still, why two forms if they are translated similarly?
>
> Waltke/O'Connor (352-359) has a very fine discussion of the problems of
> rendering the Hebrew stems into English. The book shows that all nuances
> expressed by the stems can be rendered into English, but sometimes this
> must occur by circumlocution. In some instances would a literal translation
> even be strange. We can use the Hithpael of v 10 as an example. I view it
> as factitive (it brings itself into the state of scoffing kings) or less
> likely, habituative (it has the habit of scoffing kings) (ibid 424-432).
> The reason for the use of the Hitpael is not certain, and both because of
> this and of the fact that a factitive sense is difficult or unnecessary to
> express in English, I translate the vers as if it were a Qal.
>
> This may illustrate why both prefix-forms and suffix-forms often are
> translated similarly into English. The lexical meaning of the verbs, their
> Aktionsart, the context, and linguistic convention are much more important
> for choosing the English tense than the conjugations. However, the two
> conjugations, which I view as peepholes or subjective viewpoints, may be
> used in combinations with the mentioned characteristics to express
> particular nuances. This is so because some characteristics are more
> readily combined with a closeup narrow view than with a broad view from a
> distance.

Rolf, I read with interest the rest of your analysis (which I snipped, 
assuming those
interested would either still have copies or would be able to find your post 
in the
archives), but I find nowhere an an adequate explanation by you as to why the 
specific
qatal and wayyiqtols were chosen in vv 9-11.  Could it be that even your 
approach
yields no clear explanation?   You claim (and I choose not to argue the point 
at this
time, because I think it is in reality clouding the issue) that stem meanings 
or root
characteristics drive similar *translations* in the English.  As I have 
stated in the
past, your approaches seem more centered on how a passage is translated into 
English
than what it meant to the Hebrew-speakers.  You hint at an inexpressible, 
subjective,
untranslatable difference between the prefix forms and the suffix forms.  
Perhaps you
can at least begin to describe these as you see them.  I already referred you 
to
Rocine's treatment of the issue, a referral which you have never acknowledged 
or
interacted with.  Are we able to predict, however imperfectly, where we might 
expect
prefix form and where we might expect the suffix form?  Are there cases where 
we might
expect one particular type of prefix or suffix form and not another?

If it were indeed the stem or the Aktionsart of the verb that drove this 
phenomenon,
would not the mix of WAYYIQTOL and YIQTOL/WEYIQTOL and QATAL and WEQATAL be 
more
random?  Look, however, at these passages:

v. 9  X-YIQTOL, verbless, WAYYIQTOL
v. 10 X-YIQTOL, verbless, X-YIQTOL, WAYYIQTOL, WAYYIQTOL
v. 11 QATAL (with adverb marking result=apodosis), WAYYIQTOL, WEQATAL, 
verbless

If the stem or root characteristics were the driving forces in the choice of 
verb
form, would we not expect to see some of these WAYYIQTOLs earlier in their 
clauses,
even opening the clauses?  Instead they do not appear in the clauses until 
the reader
has already come to the clear understanding that the events described are 
future in
time.  This would at least indicate that the writer recognizes that the form 
is not
completely interchangeable with the "future-indicating" forms.

I realize you look with askance at the notion of peak and its being marked by 
unusual
forms and structures, that you look at such analysis as circular and 
inconclusive.
But it is an element of discourse analysis theory which would allow for a 
reasoned
selection of these unexpected forms   It is apparent that the text here is 
trying to
elicit a heightened emotional response.  Could it be possible that the 
WAYYIQTOLs and
QATAL are used here simply because they would be recognized as unusual?  It 
would
certainly wake up the Hebrew-speaking audience, just like a deliberate 
mis-use of
language would in any language.  And the contexts clearly mark the intended 
time
references of the forms.

<1 Samuel example snipped because no one here has proposed that a feature of 
a Hebrew
form is so inherent as to be completely uncancellable lexically.>

Rolf, I have agreed with you many times that there are similar 
characteristics for the
YIQTOL-based forms, and are others for the QATAL-based forms.  I have even 
argued with
you when you have both implied and stated that discourse-types deny this.  
But,
whether you want to accept it or not, there is too high a correlation between 
the
usages of WEQATAL with X-YIQTOL, and WAYYIQTOL with X-QATAL, to be simply 
ignored.
These cases occur in both prose and poetry.  And your proposal does nothing 
to explain
these correlations.  Instead, it tries to blindly combine the WAW- forms with 
the
non-WAW.  The body of data that you are ignoring appears to be much greater 
than the
body of data that you are accusing discourse-types of ignoring.  Therefore, 
out of the
possibilities you gave in

> The described model can account for *any*
> finite verb form in the Bible, and there may be two reasons for this:
> Either the model is too vague, and therefore meaningless, because any datum
> can be accounted for, or it gives a true representation of the Hebrew
> verbal system,

I must concur with Peter that the model is too vague.  What I am reminded of 
is a
student who very carefully selects his theme for a paper, so that he can 
cover the
entire topic effectively.  I see great benefit in your model in trying to 
determine
the breadth of meaning of the YIQTOL in general and the QATAL in general, but 
the
scope of investigation is so narrow that it does not seem to either predict 
when a
certain form is used or explain why one form is used rather than another.

Thanks again for finally giving us an analysis.

Paul

--
Paul and Dee Zellmer, Jimmy Guingab, Geoffrey Beltran
Ibanag Translation Project
Cabagan, Isabela, Rep. of Philippines

zellmer AT cag.pworld.net.ph