Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>]

Dear Rolf,

I wonder if you are trying to attribute to me in the following 
paragraph something which I don't think I have ever quite said. It was 
after all you who translated my "relative (non-)past" into 
"(im)perfective". Now the following may be the case, as I suggested 
last week but with your translation made (and so the definition of 
"(im)perfective" is basically yours):

     QATAL:          perfective, non-sentence initial*
     WAYYIQTOL:      perfective, sentence initial
     YIQTOL (long):  imperfective, non-sentence initial
     YIQTOL (short): imperfective, modal?
     WEQATAL:        imperfective, sentence initial
     WEYIQTOL:       imperfective, modal?, sentence initial
     
     * QATAL may be sentence-initial at the start of direct speech 
     only, in this context it is used instead of WAYYIQTOL.

But here is another suggestion which fits better your objections and 
also the observation that there are THREE morphologically 
distinguished verb conjugations in Hebrew: QATAL, short YIQTOL and 
long YIQTOL:

     QATAL:          aspectually unmarked, non-sentence initial*
     WEQATAL:        aspectually unmarked, sentence initial
     YIQTOL (long):  imperfective, non-sentence initial
     YIQTOL (short): aspectually unmarked?, modal?
     WEYIQTOL:       aspectually unmarked?, modal?, sentence initial
     WAYYIQTOL:      perfective, sentence initial
     
     * QATAL may be sentence-initial at the start of direct speech 
     only

On this scheme it is possible to see how all of the verb forms other 
than WAYYIQTOL may co-occur in a future or habitual context, and how 
all of the forms except for long YIQTOL may co-occur in a non-habitual 
past context. Now there may well be objections to this latter scheme, 
and I am not ready to defend it. But I think it is worth looking at 
further. At least I have found an aspect of similarity between long 
YIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL: they are the aspectually marked forms, but in 
opposite directions!

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re: (long) Re[3]: WAW  the conjunction
Author:  <furuli AT online.no> at Internet
Date:    14/01/2000 20:31

<snip>

As I already have stated in this thread, I believe that in the study of 
Hebrew verbs, morphology is the fundamental property by which to start, and 
then the use of the forms. This means that  I will not without strong 
evidence accept that YIQTOL is imperfective in most contexts and perfective 
in others and that QATAL is perfective in most contexts but imperfective in 
others. This would be tantamount to linguistic anarchy. I have repeatedly 
argued that QATAL and YIQTOL in hundreds of passages are used to signal 
exactly the same thought. But this is not because they have lost their 
particular aspectual value but because the aspects have several similar 
traits, and they can be *used* similarly in different unmarked contexts. 
Jouon/Muraoka 368,369 says that YIQTOLs in some contexts have the value of 
QATAL, namely instantaneity. Given my definition of Hebrew aspect, the 
problems that forced the mentioned grammar to take this strange standpoint, 
have vanished and an imperfective explanation is possible. To have a sound 
basis to evaluate this explanation one has to look at *all* the forms in the 
Bible.


Regards

Rolf




Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo