Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Henry Churchyard <churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>]

> Subject: Re: The form of weqatal
> From: "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
> Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 22:59:50 -0700

>>>> [Snip of "Was there ever waqqatalta?"]

>> 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 think it's kind of going down the wrong path to consider "w@" in
w@qatal to be a magical morpheme (distinct from an ordinary
conjunction) that has "conversive force" (or whatever the proper
recent theoretical term for this would be).  Probably a better
question is "How did w@qatal as a unit come to have semantics which is
not a simple compositional combination of the individual semantics of
the two separate items w@- and qatal?"  As I said, I discuss this
question to some degree in Chapter 4 of my dissertation (though verbal
semantics is _not_ the focus of the chapter).  The form wa+gemination
in the wayyiqtol is rather mysterious in origin, but its function is
clearly to preserve the distinction between "imperfect" yiqtol and
"preterite" wayyiqtol (I use these terms as convenient labels only)
that were otherwise somewhat in danger of becoming homophonous due to
certain phonological and morphological changes in Hebrew.  Other
languages have various descendents of the Semitic yaqtul "preterite",
but the association of the particular form wa+gemination with the
preterite is only attested in Hebrew, as far as I know.  I think
wa+gemination is something which itself needs to be explained, and
should not necessarily be assumed to be the basis of w@qatal.  I agree
with Rolf when he says this:

>> 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.


Anyway, "waqqatalta" would involve gemination of the initial root
consonant (not a pronominal prefix), and so would be more like a
binyan pattern than anything...


[Rolf Furuli:}
>> 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.

[Dave Washburn:}
> I agree.  I don't think stress has anything to do with the form at
> all, and is conditioned by other factors.  Not being a phonologist,
> I have no idea what those factors are, but the stresses certainly
> don't seem to have any syntactic force.

There's no purely phonological reason for stress-shift in these forms;
in fact the stress shift is morphologically-conditioned to only occur
in w@qatalta/w@qatalti and there are purely phonological factors which
can _block_ the shift (but not cause it).


>>> [In weqatal] 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.

Well, the morphological/phonological restrictions are not
"inconsistencies" as such, but conditioning factors which have to be
properly taken into account and factored out before one could then
speak of inconsistency in the remaining cases.

--
Henry Churchyard   churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/