Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

Sorry, but I don't like this proposal.

Firstly, there are in fact very few +instantaneous verbs. Indeed, at 
the quantum mecahnical level there are probably none. That may sound 
like nitpicking (and is of course not directly related to Hebrew), but 
it means that even a sentence which seems to start unacceptably like 
"While the bullet was hitting the wall..." can be made completed 
acceptably on the level of "...atoms of lead were evaporating off the 
bullet head." Even in Hebrew, events can happen during the process of 
giving birth, such as one child putting out a hand, the midwife tying 
a thread on to it, and the child withdrawing the hand (Gen 38:28,29), 
so we cannot consider YLD to be +instantaneous.

Secondly, I think you have misinterpreted the verb "watteqash" in Gen 
35:16, perhaps misled by English translations. As I stated before, the 
following verse makes it clear that this relates to pain or sickness 
after birth rather than true labour pains. For it was only after the 
birth that the midwife could say that the child was a son. So, while I 
disagree with your rejection of ingressive wayyiqtols of non-stative 
verbs, I interpret this as a simple sequence, first the birth, then 
the pains. The pains do indeed form a temporal frame in the sense you 
mention for the midwife's words, but this is signalled not by 
wayyiqtol but by "wayhi be-" plus infinitive construct, which is I 
think the regular construction for setting up temporal frames.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re: Perfectivity of wayyiqtol
Author:  <manstey AT portal.ca> at Internet
Date:    26/10/1999 14:42


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


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