Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryan Rocine" <brocine AT earthlink.net>]

Dear Peter:

Thanks for your inquiry.
you wrote:

> I was surprised to read the following in your recent
posting:
>
> Shared meanings:
> yiqtol and wayyiqtol (prefixed forms) = fientive
> qatal and weqatal (suffixed forms)= attributive

Why?  ...perhaps because I tangle with Rolf from time to
time?  Although we disagree about some matters, we have
always agreed on list that prefixed forms share a meaning
and suffixed forms share a meaning.  It's the intuitively
obvious position, no?   What is that meaning?  Rolf and I
are also not far from each other on that issue, either,
although our understandings are distinct.  I have maintained
the outline I sent in my last post (of which the above quote
is an excerpt) since you have read my posts to this list.
...so why so surprised?

>
> Despite Rolf's persistent attempts, I still fail to grasp
any shared
> meaning component (at least in prose) between
(non-initial) yiqtol and
> wayyiqtol, or between (non-initial) qatal and weqatal.
Perhaps, if you
> agree with Rolf on this, you can explain this more clearly
to me. In
> what discourse types to you see these shared meanings? Are
they seen
> in prose, or only in poetry?

Actually, poetry is one of the reasons I have come to the
conclusion that I have about the semantics of the BH verb
system.  I assume that poetry in a language X is still
language X, so I conclude that the meanings (perhaps not the
conventions of syntax) understood for BH poetry should be
applicable to prose and vice versa.

So here's another point on which Rolf and I agree:  We
should not assign meaning to the forms based on quantity of
evidence only.  We may well learn more about the meanings of
the forms from statistically small but *quality*
attestations.  Since the forms are used with such relative
interchangeability in poetry and certain statistically small
but internally consistent contexts in prose, I have
preferred, like Rolf, to hold that the BH writer's choice of
form is subjective albeit constrained.

Many experts on verbal semantics assert that the morphology
of a language's verbs will exhibit a consistent meaning.
That seems intuitively obvious.  In the terms of BH, it
seems intuitively obvious that prefixed forms will share a
meaning with prefixed forms and suffixed with
suffixed...this rather than one prefixed form sharing a
meaning with one suffixed, while the other prefixed shares a
meaning with the other suffixed.

I wonder, if we found the MT  for the first time this week,
so that we would have no extant traditions or translations
for the meanings of the forms, what assumptions we would
begin with in our studies of the BH verb system and what
assumptions would survive the rigors of our scrutiny.  I
think the assumption, "same form, same meaning" would be a
sensible start, and I also think it would survive.

>
> Can this point be illustrated from Exodus 25-40, or is it
obscured for
> some reason in these parallel descriptions? On the basis
of these
> passages, I would have expected you to classify wayyiqtol
and weqatal
> togther as fientive, and yiqtol and qatal together as
attributive.
>

 Let's take two verses:
Instruction:
Exo 25:4  ve`asu 'aron `atsey $itim
"And they will be makers (weqatal) of an ark of shittim"

Fulfillment:
Exo 37:1
vaya`as betsal'el 'aron `atsey $itim
"And Betsaleel made (wayyiqtol) an ark of shittim."

The instruction is unspecified in the sense that the subject
is general, i.e. any qualified worker can do the work.  The
manner of the work is also unspecified.  The instruction is
appropriately generic or abstract in expression in
representing the future situation as an attribution: "They
will be makers..."   I can only guess at why the weqatal
could become the mainline of +projection genres Predictive
Narrative (story set in the future), Instructional Discourse
(how to do it), and the modal genre Procedural Discourse
(how it was done).  I would guess that these genres are
naturally less vivid (more abstract, generic) in the mind
than history.  Unfortunately, such guesses are quite hard to
confirm and run the risk of being mere folklore.  In any
case, in Predictive Narrative, for instance, a series of
weqatals expresses a series of "states" that the subject
will be in at a series of forward-moving points in time.

(As you may gather, I associate, for both wayyiqtol and
weqatal, the forward movement of time more to the cliticized
vav than the verb form proper.)

As for the fulfillment:  We might use the term *vivid* to
refer to the fientive wayyiqtol.  The historical text, as
much as history is vivid in the memory of the writer, and to
make history vivid to the audience, prefers the prefixed
form.  Again, possibly only a nice, psycho-linguistic
etiological tale, but you might find it thought-provoking.

I realize the picture of the BHVS is not now complete, but
we're not in a hurry, right?  We can build more of the model
as we go, a piece at a time.  I fear being long-winded.

Hoping to help,
Bryan


B. M. Rocine
Associate Pastor
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13206

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