Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

 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