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  • From: "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Re[9]: The form of weqatal (long)
  • Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 13:11:28 -0700

Peter wrote:
> I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear: I was responding here not to
> Dave's original listing of four conjugations but to Rodney's
> rearrangement of this listing which showed X+YIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL as a
> pair.

OK, I understand now. Thanks for clarifying that.

> I think that Henry clearly demonstrated (from evidence within Hebrew
> only, not from comparison with other languages) that there are two
> originally separate YIQTOL conjugations, one conjugation with longer
> forms and one, the jussive, with shorter forms. The essence of his
> demonstration was that in the Hiphil and in hollow verbs the vowel in
> the short form cannot be derived from phonological shortening of the
> vowel in the long form. If you have a clear counter-argument to this
> phonological one, I would be interested to see it - preferably on this
> list as I do not have immediate access to your article.
>
> Now I accept that if the WAY- in WAYYIQTOL is not a form of the
> conjunction (which is possible but not proved), then there is
> something more going on here, i.e. WAYYIQTOL is not the conjunction
> plus the shorter WAYYIQTOL. I think Henry's argument would also show
> that WAYYIQTOL cannot be derived from any prefix added to the LONG
> form of YIQTOL. Thus, a fortiori, there is an even greater difference
> between X+YIQTOL (long form) and WAYYIQTOL.

What Henry wrote, as well as his most recent post in response to me, is almost verbatim what appears in Waltke and O'Connor and other writings, especially those of A. Rainey that he cited. I stand corrected, or at least narrowed down, on the fact that it is Amarna Canaanite, rather than standard Akkadian, that seems to show the two-prefix-conjugation pattern. That was a lapse on my part and I apologize.

Here is the relevant material from my article, modified to adapt to the ASCII of the Net and sans footnotes:

--
Having established that we are dealing with an inflection morpheme, we must also realize that how we view the historical development of the construction may greatly influence how we understand it. Many, such as Waltke-O'Connor and Finley, hold to the view set out by Bauer: somewhere in its development, Hebrew had two prefix conjugations, a short one and a long one (Waltke & O'Connor 1990; cf Finley 1981). The long one became the imperfect as we know it in the OT; the other attached itself to waw and became the WP.
Of course, there is no clear documentary evidence for this hypothesis, other than the fact that in the WP certain words in certain cases appear in a shortened form. The most notable is the hip`il stem; normally, lamed-he verbs drop the final he in the WP, but this is not constant (see Waltke and O'Connor 1990:544 for several exceptions). Likewise, hollow and geminate (double-`ayin) verbs use a shortened form in the WP.
Silverman offered an implicitly transformational description of formation of the WP: the verb is moved to the head of the clause, and the WA. attaches to it. After that, certain phonological changes occur to ensure that the word is still phonologically "balanced" (Silverman 1973). Among these phonological changes, we submit, is the shortening of certain classes of verbs.
The hip`il is the only stem that adds extra "weight" to the interior of a verb, and it adds it near the end of the word. A simple prefix is not heavy enough to upset the word's balance, since it replaces the offsetting he of the stem with another full, closed syllable. However, when the WP transformation adds yet another closed syllable, this one with a doubled prefix- consonant, the word becomes "top-heavy"; it now has twice the extra weight at the front that it has at the back.
There are two possible solutions to this dilemma: either add yet another letter toward the end of the word, or shift the center of gravity. In general, Hebrew opted for the former in the first person, and the latter in the second and third persons. In the second and third person forms, the yod drops out, the corresponding vowel shortens, and the accent shifts back toward the prefix as far as it can go, restoring the word's "balance." Thus, the shortened form of the hip`il WP is not evidence of a separate short conjugation at all; it is a case of phonological conditioning after the addition of an inflectional morpheme. This explanation is much less complex than the two- conjugation hypothesis, and accounts for the data at least equally well, if not better. In fact, it provides a cohesive theory for both the short form in the second and third persons, and the lengthened form in the first person. The two-conjugation hypothesis cannot do that.
The same can be shown for lamed-he verbs and hollow verbs, as well as geminates. In every case, the shortening of the word occurs for phonological reasons, not for syntactic ones.
Qimron more or less recognized this fact (Qimron, _JQR_ 1986:148-161). He showed, by a fairly exhaustive study, that the short form predominates in imperfects with waw-conjunctive, as well as in those with waw-consecutive. Thus the presence of the waw tends to trigger the use of the short form, "regardless of whether the waw is consecutive or conjunctive." He further strengthens his argument by showing that the presence of a waw also triggers use of the he form of third person pronominal suffixes (as opposed to nun forms).
Qimron's study suffers from several flaws, not the least of which is his assumption that the consecutive forms are actually conversive (on p. 158 he refers to luqv as the "inversive perfect," following the medieval idea that the waw inverts the tense of the verb). He also assumes that the differences between the short and long forms of the imperfect are morphological (p.149). But such a change need not be elevated to the level of morphology, i.e. it is not a necessary feature of word-formation, either for syntactic or semantic reasons. The changes from long to short form affect only the sound of the verb, not its function or meaning. Qimron recognizes that "Phonological factors, such as accentuation, may well play a role here too" (p.161 n.13), but fails to follow up on this thought.
Every grammarian who has studied Hebrew verbs has recognized the similarity between the short form of the imperfect and the jussive. Driver went to great lengths to explain why it is not a jussive, but only looks like one, and his points are well considered. Similarities of phonetic form do not necessarily point to identity. In English, the "correct" subjunctive is If I were . . . This does not mean, however, that the verb in you were is a subjunctive that either has somehow drifted into the domain of the indicative, or carries some latent subjunctive meaning. It simply means that the two, possible for diachronic reasons, share the same surface phonetic form. Their similarity is phonological, not morphological. No speaker of English will confuse the two, primarily due to the presence of the subjunctive indicator if.
This is where Qimron has made his crucial mistake. By placing the form of the shortened imperfect in the domain of morphology, he must conclude that "the forms with waw were repatterned after the cohortative and jussive system." (Qimron 1986:161) But if the form is the result of phonological factors, as we have shown here, this is unnecessary. The phonetic conditioning that the addition of the "heavy" prefixed waw effects on the verb simply produces a form that happens to resemble the jussive. However, as in the case of the English were, there is no confusion of modes involved; the presence of the waw with the consonant doubling assures that the two will be kept distinct in the mind of the speaker or listener. Thus, the approach taken here not only provides an explanation of the form that is simpler than Bauer's, but it also simplifies Qimron's approach, and provides a crucial unifying factor for explaining the similarities to both the jussive and cohortative.
We conclude, then, that the verbal portion of the WP is a true prefix form that is sometimes phonologically altered upon the attachment of the waw and its accompanying features.
--



Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"Oh, no!  They've all become giant Swiss lederhosen-clad
dancing yodelers!"  "Talk about unpredictable!" - P&B







  • Re: Re[9]: The form of weqatal (long), Dave Washburn, 08/13/1999

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