Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Dave

 RF:
>> I do not think your questions are hopeless or unscientific. Many more
>> questions should have been asked regarding Hebrew grammar than really has
>> been the case. No questions are silly! But I do not think there is any
>> evidence for another accentuation of WEQATAL than we find in the MT. There
>> is, however, much inconsistency in the MT.

DW:
>Do you mean "pronunciation" where you said "accentuation"?
>That's what I had in mind.  A lot regarding other verb forms has
>been pulled from Akkadian, Amarna, etc. and I'm wondering if
>there's anything in any of those related to this question.

Yes, I mean pronunciation.

RF:
>> All the summer I have been working with mapping the 20,000 QATALS/WEGATALS
>> in the Bible, to find the combination of accent, temporal meaning (past,
>> present, and future) and syntactical role.

DW:
>Better you than I!

RF:
>The purpose is to find out to
>> which degree the penultimate accentuation of  WEQATAL is connected with
>> particular groups of verbs (for example lamed he verbs) and how many are
>> pausal forms. I am also collecting all QATALS with future meaning, and they
>> are not few! Already at this point (about one third of the collecting work
>> is done), it is quite clear to me that WEQATAL does not represent ONE
>> particular mood or that it represents ONE tense (future). Examples of
>> indicative, imperative, "subjunctive", and "optative" can be found, as well
>> as past, present, and future time.

 DW:
>This sounds a lot like Galia's conclusion that it's a modal form...


Comrie points out that there has been some discussion about whether English
has a future tense, or whether "future" simply is a mood, because what is
future is not certain. We have a similar problem in Hebrew. A great number
of WEQATALs *serve* as imperatives (they often follow an imperative in the
same person and number). But this is pragmatic implicature rather than
semantic meaning. As mentioned, most WEQATALs represent direct speech, and
because of this, they either have  present meaning (a few) or future
meaning, or are modal. Because of this, and because futurity and modality
may be quite close to one another, it is easy to ascribe modality to more
examples than is necessary. It seems to be quite certain that modality both
in WEYIQTOLs and in WEQATALs  is pragmatic and not semantic.

I am at present working with Samuel. Look at the following examples:

(1) 1 Sam 10:2. The first two WEQATALS with future meaning cannot be
anything but indicative. The third WEQATAL (D(G) has present meaning and
must also be indicative.

The pragmatic nature of the temporal meaning is illustrated by the next
examples:

(2) The words "afraid for us" in 1 Sam 9:5 and "afraid for you" in 1 Sam
10:2 refer to the same situation and both are expressed by WEQATALs, yet
their temporal reference is different (The difference in stress is
explained by Henry's rule).  The example in 9:5 has future meaning while
the one in 10:2 has present meaning. These meanings cannot be connected
with the *form* but they are construed from the context; thus being
pragmatic.
(3) The meaning of WEHAYF in 1 Samuel 10:7 is future but the meaning of the
same word in 1 Samuel 10:9  is past. And again, the temporal meaning must
be construed on the basis of the context.

RF
>If we look for a common denominator of
>> the WEQATALS with ultimate stress, it would be "direct speech" rather than
>> future meaning or modality. But even this does not fit completely, because
>> there are narrative examples with past meaning and ultimate stress as well.

DW
>Can you toss out a few examples?  (And let me know where I can
>buy the finished product when it's complete!)

Most WEQATALs with past meaning have penultimate stress, but the word SXQ
in 2 Samuel 6:21 has ultimate stress although it has past meaning. My study
of the QATAL/WEQATALs will be included in my thesis: I will let you know
when it is finished.

RF
>> I agree with those who believe that the Masoretes pointed the text on the
>> basis of what they heard recited in the synagogue. However,all the examples
>> of penultimate stress where we, on the basis of the general pattern, would
>> have expected  WEQATALs with ultimate stress, is a problem for this view.

RF
>How so?  Could the stress patterns be related to the way they
>were chanted/recited?  I don't follow you here, sorry.

The stress patterns evidently are related to the way they were
chanted/recited. If the penultimate stress of the weqatals signals that
there is a semantic difference between some QATALs with prefixed WE and
other QATALs with the same prefix, we would expect two things:

(1) Ultimate stress would only occur with WEQATALs with the particular
semantic meaning they should signal.
(2) A high consistency in the use of ultimate stress would occur, except
when phonological reasons (including pausal forms)  required penultimate
stress.

These expectations do not materialize - there is quite a lot of
inconsistency. The reason can hardly be that the recitation in the
synagogue was "wrong" or that the Masoretes erred in what they heard and
wrote. The number of inconsistencies is too high for such explanations.
Therefore, it is difficult to believe that the ultimate stress indicates
*one single semantic property*, and it is easier to think that it signals
several pragmatic properties which can be grouped together.

The matter of "linguistic convention" in Hebrew is highly neglected. If a
language has no grammaticalized tenses, as I believe is the case with
Hebrew, linguistic convention will be more important than in other
languages. The convention seems to be that YIQTOL  is used as the basic
form  for present and future, and QATAL is used as the basic form for the
past. If both forms are aspects, they can both be used for past, present
and future. But to help the understanding of the text, there may be
different stress patterns when a form is used in areas where it is not the
"basic" form. This may indicate that when QATAL  is used with non-past
meaning (present,future, imperative, "subjunctive", and "optative"), the
stress (in 1. and 2. pers.) is different from its use in past contexts. A
model taking the penultimate stress as pragmatic rather than semantic could
account for all the exceptions which are seen, while a semantic model would
be hard pressed in this situation.

RF:
>> It also militates against the view that the WEQATALs have a uniform meaning
>> ( either representing future tense or modality) and that the ultimate
>> accentuation is a token of this. I will later report some of my findings.

DW:
>WRT future tense, I agree.  WRT modality, I'm not so sure.  It
>looks to me as though Galia has made a strong case for weqatal
>as a modal.  After I read her book I went through the examples in
>Waltke-O'Connor and found that her modality idea deals with pretty
>much all of them.  Can you show a counter-example or two of the
>type you're describing?
>

A final word regarding WE. Nobody has ever pointed to a passage where the
WE-element functions differently from a conjunction, but WEQATAL is used in
final clauses, conditional clauses, temporal clauses etc and as a
co-ordinating element, just as we would expect of a conjunction. The reason
for the WE in the forms which in the grammars are called "perfect
consecutive" simply is that the situations are direct speech, and the
Hebrew idiom required a conjunction in such situations. The examples of
WE+QATAL which are not counted as "perfect consecutive" occur i past
narratives (a few represent direct speech in the past), and the WE simply
serve as a co-ordinating factor. We do not expect verbs with imperative,
"subjunctive", and "optative" meaning (in our Indo-European sense of the
words) in past contexts, and therefore there is a "difference" between
"imperfect consecutive" and  some forms of WE+QATAL. But this "difference"
is not semantic (the WE is in all instances a simple conjunction), but the
"difference" is connected with genre and linguistic convention, as
described above.

I therefore conclude that "perfect consecutive" is non-existent - it simply
is an artificial construction based on faulty premises - and that all
QATALs with and without prefixed WE and with ultimate and penultimate
stress represent the one and the same conjugation.




Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo