Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Henry,
> >> 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).  

I would call it "inflectional force" and hardly consider it magical.  It 
may indeed be the wrong road, but I think I'll walk it a little further 
just to be sure.

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?"  

Essentially the same question, though it begins by assuming that 
the we- is the conjunction, which is exactly what I'm questioning.  If 
we begin with that assumption, then of course the question is 
answered, but only by defining it out of existence.  I'd like to 
exhaust a few other possibilities before I do that.

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).  

I've begun reading it, but haven't gotten too far into it yet.

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.  

If it's an inflectional morpheme rather than a conjunction, as I have 
argued elsewhere, then its origin is hardly any more "mysterious" 
than any other inflectional morpheme.  Only by hanging on to its 
dubious status as a form of the conjunction does the mystery 
persist.

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.  

As I recall, the Moabite stone has some examples of it as well, but 
anyone can feel free to correct me on that because I haven't 
checked recently.

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...

Only in terms of phonology, not necessarily in terms of syntax.  I'm 
less concerned about its phonological status than I am about its 
status as a morpheme producing a certain inflection in the verb.

> [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).

Then how is the shift explained?  I'll keep reading chapter 4...

In any case, this is taking us very far afield from my original 
question, so I'll reiterate: I'm looking for material, positive or 
negative, from such sources as Amarna Canaanite, Byblian 
Canaanite and other vocalized cognates (as opposed to strictly 
consonantal ones like Ugaritic) to explore the possibility that 
weqatal originally (or at least in an earlier stage) had a different 
vocalization than what we see in the Masoretic text.  Help?

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