Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Gday John,

>> Peter wrote:
>> This is an interesting test and one which has the possibility of
>> helping to understand wayyiqtol better. But I wonder how we can be
>> sure of the "uncontroversial" nature of any examples. For example,
>> suppose someone found a (hypothetical) parallel to Gen 38:28 in which
>> a wayyiqtol of YLD is used for "give birth", and cited that as
>> evidence for imperfective wayyiqtol. Could someone else disprove that
>> by saying that (in this context at least) the wayyiqtol of YLD means
>> "began to give birth", just as in Numbers 25:1 the wayyiqtol means
>> "began to dwell" rather than "dwelled". Is there a clear distinction
>> between the verbs "give birth" and "dwell" in this respect? How can
>> you explain it clearly? I don't think I am understanding the point you
>> are making with "+telic".
>>
[John wrote]:
>I agree with Peter that there's a problem with the methodology
>which can seemingly explain away all
>potential counter-examples.  E.g. Genesis 35:16 Then they
>journeyed from Bethel; and when there
>was still some distance to go to Ephrath, Rachel began to give
>birth (watteled) and she suffered
>severe labor (watteqash belidtah).  And when she was in severe
>labor the midwife said to her...
>If it said "while she was giving birth" with something other than
>wayyiqtol would you call it
>"non-controversial non-perfective" ?

This is a very interesting example John, and I'm glad you brought it up.
Firstly, the watteled seems to be imperfective as the next verb gives the
view from the inside of the event, rather than the outside. The ingressive
interpretations, "X began to do Y" should be restricted to stative verbs
like "he was ill" > "he fell ill", etc. There are plenty of examples of
this. But "give birth" like "battle" in previous posts in non-stative
(That's an understatement! - my wife will deliver any day now!). Furthermore
it also seems perfectly natural in English to say, "And she gave birth and
she struggled with it." But notice if I change the first verb to "shot dead
the policeman" and said, "And she shot dead the policeman and she struggled
with it." you would now take the antecedent of 'it' to be the fact of his
death, not the act of shooting. So the verbal semantics of give birth and
battle may be what is important. In linguistics this is captured in the
distinction between +/- instantaneous or +/-momentaneous events, and
sometimes other Aktionsart distinctions. However it is not always the case
for this particular distinction to be grammatically relevent to a
description of a language. With the examples given here, and I guess there
are many others, BH may be one such language. That is, a -instantaneous
+dynamic +telic verb (called an ACHIEVEMENT usually) may combine with
wayyiqtol to introduce a tmeporal frame within which subsequent wayyiqtols
add further detail. Naturally from our pragmatic knowledge of the world, we
would expect after "And they held a war" to be able to have dozens or even
hundreds of events in the "war" frame, but if after "and she gave birth" we
included more than a couple of events the reader would either assume the
F-frame has been left behind, OR that it is humorous.

What do you think of this proposal?

With regards,
Matthew Anstey