Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Henry,
 
> > 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).
> 
> Do you mean "occasional" in the sense of occurring only in
> 1st. sg. and 2nd. masc. sg., or in the sense of being phonologically
> blocked in pause, and before words beginning with a main-stressed
> syllable, or in the sense of stress-shift not correlating with
> semantics according to your theory?

"Occasional" in the sense of inconsistent.  There's a pattern in 
some of the forms, as you mention. But as Waltke & O'Connor 
point out, there are plenty of exceptions to the stress rule, and as 
you mentioned, it only happens in certain forms.

> > > 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? 
> >
> There's no particular evidence for it; and really, the conjunction in 
> w@qatal is the plain old ordinary everyday boring form of the
> conjunction, which doesn't seem to need any special explanation,
> while it's the form of the conjunction in wayyiqtol which is 
> mysterious, and still not adequately explained
> historically/etymologically. 

Of course, this is only true if it's a conjunction, and I have already 
argued at length that it's not.  One of those lines of argument is 
that it affects the force of the verb in ways that an allomorph of the  
"regular" conjunction can't do.  And this is the dilemma with 
weqatal; visually and phonologically, it's exactly like the ordinary 
conjunction, as you said.  So how can a simple conjunction effect 
such a change in the force of a verb?  As far as I know, it can't.  
Hence, like the wayyiqtol, it must be a specified grammatical 
formative of some kind.  Using the wayyiqtol as an analogy for 
determining what this formative is, I came up with my question.  I'm 
still wondering about evidence from Akkadian and especially 
Amarna Canaanite.  W & O mention some tantalizing features of 
Amarna language, but don't follow up on it enough to answer my 
question.


> In chapter 4 of my dissertation, I
> discuss the form of w@qatal and its 
> relationship to the form of
> wayyiqtol, but I don't have any stunning 
> hypotheses about the
> cause of the difference between the forms of the 
> conjunction;
> the main thing I observe is that wayyiqtol originated as 
> a very
> old Semitic tense, and shows relic phonology of various types 
>
> (though the wayy- form of the conjunction is only attested in
> Hebrew, > as far as I know), while w@qatal as a separate
> morphological/phonological > entity is a recent analogous
> innovation that doesn't show "deep" 
> phonological alternations. 

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