Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Peter,

See my comments below,



>Dear Rolf,
>
>Thank you for clarifying how the term "semantic meaning" has a meaning
>greater than the sums of the meanings of the words "semantic" and
>"meaning". Just like WAYYIQTOL may mean more than the sum of WE- and
>YIQTOL. Well, technical terms work differently from verbal semantics,
>so that's not a serious line of argument!
>
>I cannot comment on your Aramaic except to say that most of the
>examples of past YIQTOL you quoted from Daniel 4:12,36 could easily be
>read in an iterative and/or gradual (what should I call this if
>"durative" is wrong?) sense. So they would teach us nothing even if
>they were Hebrew. I am not sure about "my reason returned", but
>perhaps the suggestion is that this was a gradual process, though this
>could also be telic like your YLD examples from Job.
>
>Joshua 7:6 is an interesting example. The NRSV "and fell to the
>ground... until the evening" is not good English, but I think we need
>to read the Hebrew (AD-HA(EREB as something like "AND STAYED LIKE THAT
>until evening". My explanation would be that the WAYYIQTOL has its
>normal meaning, ingressive with respect to the resulting state, and
>that state lasts for the time indicated by the (AD phrase. I have a
>feeling that this is a common idiom, can anyone confirm it?

The meaning evidently is that he fell (bowed down) and stayed in this
position until the evening, as you say. The critical point however / and I
have time and again stressed this very important principle on the list/is:
What is semantic and what is pragmatic? Does the lexical meaning of NPL
only indicate a downward movement with the reaching the ground as the coda
of the ET, or does it also include lieing on the ground? It is clearly
signaled that he stayed on the ground until the evening, but is this signal
based upon lexis+grammar (aspect), or on lexis only? One or more examples
of NPL expressed as QATAL or WEQATAL where the meaning "to lie" clearly is
included, would be my demand for accepting that only lexical meaning is the
basis for the thought.

>
>As for my point about finding an imperfective explanation of WAYYIQTOL
>forced, the explanation I was thinking of was the one which you made
>in your posting, about WAYYIQTOLs being imperfective because they are
>resultative, even in the case of MWT because of beliefs in the
>afterlife. This explanation is of course based on YOUR definition of
>"imperfective". I find this explanation forced, simply because in a
>vast number of cases of WAYYIQTOL there is absolutely no focus on any
>sort of result. Indeed in many cases there simply is no enduring
>result, e.g. to take an example at random, in 1 Kings 2:40-41:
>
>"Shimei arose (WAYYIQTOL) and saddled (WAYYIQTOL) a donkey, and went
>(WAYYIQTOL) to Achish in Gath, to search (INF CONSTR) for his slaves;
>Shimei went (WAYYIQTOL) and brought (WAYYIQTOL) his slaves from Gath.
>When Solomon was told (WAYYIQTOL) that..."
>
>Shimei went to Gath, but there was no resulting state because he came
>straight back, and had already returned before verse 41. At least I
>think that any explanation of these WAYYIQTOLs as resultative and so
>imperfective would be forced. Of course you are welcome to try to come
>up with an explanation which is not forced, but I don't expect to see
>one.
>


We should keep in mind that the importance of the notions "resultative" and
"factitive" in Hebrew studies is rather new. A. Goetze (1942) was the first
scholar who studied the "Dopplungstamm" of Accadian after modern linguitic
principles. He concluded that the resultativity was the principal meaning.
Newer studies of Hebrew has shown the same. But this is just one side of
verbal meaning.

Your examples above are well taken. I agree that there is nothing
pertaining to resultativity in the above verses. I think this notion is
often stressed in verbs like YLD, MWT  and some other telic verbs, but less
often in other verbs. I think that the basic use of WAYYIQTOL parallels the
Aramaic use of YIQTOL in past contexts (as I have illustrated), and this I
think is similar to the Hebrew use of YIQTOL  in past contexts. This can in
some respects be compared with the use of participles or infinitives, which
make visible the nature of the event and ignore the end. The difference is
that infinitives and participles do not express aspect as do the finite
forms. Just as the Aramaic participles )NH W)MR is used consistently with
the meaning "he answered and said" (answer/say is a contribution of the
participles, the -ed and -d is implied on the basis of the narrative),
similarly do YIQTOLs/WAYYIQTOLs with past meaning make visible a part of
the action, and the past meaning and the termination of the events are
supplied from the narrative.

I therefore find four basic "functions" of the imperfective aspect
(WAYYIQTOL) in past contexts:

(1) The linguistic convention is to use YIQTOL and WAYY-  as an expression
of consecutive events in narrative texts (new RTs). The verb makes visible
a part of the details or nature of the event (thus indicating what the
whole nature is), the WAW (WAYY-) is the tool used to express the
proceeding  narrative.

(2) WAYYIQTOL is used to stress what is resultative.

(3) WAYYIQTOL is used to signal modality (subjunctive).

(4) The combination of WAYYIQTOL with particular Aktionsarts, verbal
arguments (subject/object) which are count-nouns/non-count nouns,
definite/indefinite, singular/plural, and other contextual factors can
signal a host of different nuances to the reader.


Regards

Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo