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  • From: "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: The form of weqatal
  • Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 09:27:28 -0700


Friends,
I'm working on developing a more formal analysis of the weqatal
form along the lines of what I've already done with wayyiqtol, and
I'm wondering about something. For some time I had doubts that
there was such a thing as a separate weqatal conjugation, mostly
because there's nothing really phonetic to distinguish it from the
simple qatal with a simple conjunction (I have doubts about the
validity of the occasional accent shift, and even if it's accurate it's
only an occasional phenomenon). So here's what I'm wondering,
and I'm hoping some of you comparative semiticists can help me:
is it possible at all that this form, in BH times, was pronounced
differently than the Masoretes pointed it? Specifically, I'm
wondering if there's any possibility that it used an A-class vowel
and gemination along the lines of the wayyiqtol? So e.g. in Gen
40:13 we would have, rather than W:NFTAT.F, perhaps something
like WAN.FTAT.F with the geminating prefix. Is this completely off
the wall, or could such a thing be possible?

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




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