Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 23:59:12 -0700
> Author: "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net
> Subject: Re: The form of weqatal
 
>> I think it's kind of going down the wrong path to consider "w@" in
>> w@qatal to be a 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?"

>> 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.

Actually, I only said w@- in w@qatal is morphologically the same as
the ordinary conjunction; I'm leaving the historical origin of
wa+gemination in the wayyiqtol open.  However, in synchronic Biblical
Hebrew, wayyiqtol has the force of a conjoined item.  And if the
origin of wa+gemination is _not_ mysterious, then at least the
following need to be explained:

1) What is the historical origination of gemination in this form?
It's probably the result of the original presence of a consonant
(which in the later language assimilated phonologically to the
consonant of the following person/number prefix), but which consonant
was this, and what morphological function did it originally serve?

2) If wa+gemination in the wayyiqtol did not originally contain the
conjunction in some form, then how is the word-initial [w] to be
explained, considering that in basically all situations _except_ the
conjunction *wa- an original word-initial [w] ended up changing into a
word-initial [y] in the later language?


>> 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.

According to Garr's "Dialect Geography of Syria Palestine 1000-586
B.C.E.", p. 185, a letter waw preceding an orthographic
imperfect-looking form (i.e. original preterite) is used in past
narrative function in Deir Alla, Moabite, and Hebrew inscriptions,
while on p. 138 it's seen that a truncated lamedh-he preterite
prefixed with waw occurs in Moabite and Hebrew inscriptions.  But from
the nature of the orthography used in such inscriptions, we only have
evidence for the precise phonological form wa+gemination in Hebrew.


>>> 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?

Synchronically it just is (there exists a morphological stress-shift
rule).  As for diachronic origins, in chapter 4 I discuss the
historical evolution of the somewhat similar consecutive imperfect
morphological stress shift in excruciating detail, and also take a
stab at explaining the w@qatal stress shift as by analogy with the
wayyiqtol stress shift.

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