Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Matthew Anstey" <manstey AT portal.ca>]

Gday Dave & Peter,

[Dave]
>Wow!  It's a good thing I read fairly fluent scholarese.  I do wonder if
>these divisions and definitions aren't splitting the hairs a little too
>finely.

[Matt]
The motivation for the differentiation is syntactic and semantic. Basically
these four types of Aspect are either grammaticised or lexicalised in almost
all languages to varying degrees. It aids more accurate description of what
is going on. For example, phasal aspect is largely lexicalised in Hebrew -
kalah X - he ceased to X; chalal le-X - he began to do X; yasaph X - he
continued to do X (X is usually le + infinitive construct). But
Quantification Aspect is neither lexicalised or clearly grammaticised in
Hebrew. In English, Habituality is lexicalised by "he used to do X". In some
languages there are Habitual verb inflections. In Hebrew the yiqtol mostly
takes up this function, but it is not a Habitual form. This is because
languages like Hebrew with neither a "he used to do X" lexical item nor a
Habitual inflection, tend to generate Habitual through using Imperfective
forms with bounded events and/or Habitual adverbs. Hebrew does both. 1 Sam 1
has "year by year" as an adverbial habitual. And a yiqtol with a clearly
bounded event (ie Accomplishment Aktionsart) usually is habitual (see W&O
for examples).

>
>> Imperfectivity I mean the view of one of the marches in the band. This
>> metaphor is from Isacenko.
>
>It's a good one.  I'll probably "borrow" (read, pilfer!) it somewhere
>along the way.

The 'c' in Isacenko has an acute over it, and the reference is 1962, "Die
russische Sprache der Gegenwart, I: Formenlehre" but I just got it out of
Dik 1997 The Theory of Functional Grammar. I.

>
>By telicity I mean that the situation has an
>> inherent terminal point. So the verb "rotate" is non-telic and
>the verb "dry
>> out" is telic. There is therefore an inherent incompatibility between
>> Imperfective verbs and telic events, and this often forces an iterative
>> interpretation. (eg The wet pants dried out several times). This
>is common
>> in BH. Likewise, a Perfective verb with a State often forces out an
>> ingressive interpretation, as in "it began to rotate." This is
>also common
>> in BH. W&O have many examples of both. This is what Peter was perhaps
>> thinking when he translated, "The battle began and some men died
>and Uriah
>> died".
>
>OK, I'm clearer now.  Responding to what Peter wrote as well, I am
>aware that hillax"m is used sometimes with the sense "begin to do
>battle."  What I'm wondering is, what criteria do we use to decide
>when it means that and when it simply means "do battle."

I am not sure of the "begin battle" interpretation here. Treating a
perfective form as ingressive is normal with stative verbs. So take Gen 16.4
as an example, watteqal gebirtah be`eyneyha, "And her mistress was
insignificant in her eyes." The wayyiqtol+stative usually gives ingressive,
and the context here clearly demands, "And her mistress became insignificant
in her eyes." The perfective interpretation views the stative event
(unbounded at both ends) as bounded at the onset. The problem with the
"battle" example is that it is a non-stative verb, and it makes perfect
sense in most languages just to say "The men battled Joab. And some people
died". using the same verb forms. I prefer to see the first verb as
introducing a temporal frame within which the subsequent events occured. In
fact, the battle does not end until 12.26, and in the meantime Nathan
arrives, Bathsheba mourns, etc. The ingressive interpretation works here,
and would probably work for most such frame-verbs, so distinguishing the two
options is rather difficult.  But comparing with Gen 16.4 which *must* be
ingressive, I would say that this is first step.
>
>> [Dave]
>> >Syntactic forms don't have "semantic function."  That one of the
>> >fundamental principles of separation of syntax and semantics.  I
>> >haven't bleached anything; it wasn't there to begin with.
>>
>> [Matthew]
>> It depends on what you mean by "separation," and this question takes into
>> heavy theoretical disputes. I disagree with the Chomskian position, the
>> "syntactocentric view of language". I hold to the
>> "communication-and-cognition perspective" as Van Valin puts it. Syntax is
>> not autonomous, nor is it the central aspect of language, rather
>is is the
>> status/relationship between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics that is
>> paramount. Syntactical categories (like predicate, terms) are
>semantically
>> motivated.
>
>Here's where we part company on the theoretical level.  I've gotten
>some exciting results by investigating Hebrew from an autonomous-
>syntax POV.  Specifically, I've been able to find a unified field of
>usage for all 4 major verb forms (qatal, yiqtol, weqatal, wayyiqtol,
>though my investigation hasn't gone in that order); there really is a
>common thread that unites all the usages of all of them.  This, it
>seems to me, is what has been lacking in previous theories.  By
>mixing semantic categories in with syntactic form, we get things
>like "progressive perfect" (W&O), which strikes me as an
>oxymoron, or we get Andersen talking about sequentiality of the
>wayyiqtol while simultaneously saying it can begin a new section,
>and the like.  By separating syntax from semantics, I've been able
>to learn what it is that unites all the usages of the wayyiqtol
>(among others, but at the moment this is our topic so I'll try to
>stick to it), which seems to me to be a rather desirable goal.  I
>don't think syntax is primary, contra Chomsky, but I do see the
>need for a definite order to our investigation and a need to keep the
>categories separate for purposes of developing explanatory
>adequacy.  Semantics and pragmatics are on equal footing,
>linguistically speaking, but are separate issues from syntax and
>particularly from the question of what is coded in a syntactic form.

[Matt]
I'm interested in knowing more about your model. Can you share any details
yet?

[Dave]
>I havent' decided whether tense is a syntactic property or not.  In
>Hebrew, I don't think so.  In English, obviously it is.  Hence, I could
>suggest that it's a syntactic property that may or may not be
>coded in a particular language.  What do you think?

[Matt]
The standard view is it is the grammaticisation of time along a linear time
axis. So yes, a syntactic property. I am still undecided as to what degree
tense is grammaticised in Hebrew, but I think the evidence is that it is. It
is not very much lexicalised, as it tends to be with languages with highly
aspectual verb systems, and the fact that most "exceptions" occur in
negative, conditional, and non-declarative sentences makes me suspicious, as
TAM theorists all agree that in these circumstances languages tend to like
overriding their otherwise stable TAM system. The fact that you can't even
negate a wayyiqtol is interesting in this regard. I also am increasingly
thinking that word-order affects the verbal system but I'm stuck in a
chicken-and-egg argument with myself over this. Do they change verb form
because the order changes, or does the order change because the verb-form
changes?

With regards,
Matthew