Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Rolf,

I agree that this thread is running out of steam, and I thank you for 
giving me a lot of help from it. I think we understand one another a 
lot better now, and we are not as far apart as we might have thought, 
for a lot of the differences were in definition. I hope you can now 
get on with your new semester without too much distraction from this 
list.

However, there do remain some differences of substance, related to 
your newly introduced material on other Semitic languages. Now I am 
not an expert on this. So let me ask a question to you or to others. I 
have read that there was a prefix conjugation preterit in Ugaritic as 
well as in Akkadian. Is that a general opinion? I understand that this 
has not been proved to your satisfaction on your theory - I don't see 
that it could be, especially given the limited and unvocalised corpus 
of Ugaritic. But am I right in saying that in Ugaritic and Akkadian 
there is a "short" prefix form (one of the ones listed as 
"subjunctive" below) commonly used in what appears to be narrative, 
with no clear indication of modality in the context, just as WAYYIQTOL 
is used in Hebrew narrative? If so, I think that must be a strong 
argument for a distinction between two prefix forms going back to 
proto-Semitic, one of which is "imperfective" and the other (apart 
from its modal uses) is something like a preterit. You wrote: "There 
can be little doubt that the line of demarcation in the verbal systems 
of the Semitic languages is drawn between 
prefix-conjugation/suffix-conjugation." But to me, this evidence puts 
a very large measure of doubt on this statement.

If you ask, how could this improbable situation have arisen, let me 
speculate into the prehistory of Semitic, to a time when most verb 
forms were (rather like in English) not inflected for person, but the 
person was indicated by a pronoun before the verb. Perhaps at that 
time there were two basic verb forms, something like QTUL for non-past 
and QTULU for past. There was also (to speculate) a participle form 
something like QATAL used for more stative situations, and for some 
reason the word ordering was that the personal pronoun came after the 
participle. Perhaps the 1st person plural personal pronoun was 
something like NA. So we had forms NA QTUL non-past and NA QTULU past, 
and QATAL NA as an alternative for stative situations. Join the words 
together, and you get close to the b-Hebrew situation with three basic 
forms rather than two. Just speculation, I know, but sometimes it is 
useful to speculate to get around the type of argument that "this 
situation could not have arisen" which you like to use.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[2]: (long) Re[3]: WAW  the conjunction
Author:  <furuli AT online.no> at Internet
Date:    15/01/2000 22:19


Dear Peter,

<snip>

RF
This seems to be a better model than the previous one, and you should make 
some work on this scheme.
Regarding the number of morphologically distinguished conjugations, I still 
just see two. There can be little doubt that the line of demarcation in the 
verbal systems of the Semitic languages is drawn between 
prefix-conjugation/suffix-conjugation. It seems to me that modality 
(non-indicative) can be signaled in several ways in Hebrew:

<snip>

I do not view the cohortative as a conjugation of its own, and neither is 
it logical to view the short YIQTOL as an independent conjugation. Looking 
at the cognate languages, we find that indicative is long and subjunctive 
is short:

ARAMAIC: Indicative (2 p. pl) TIKT:BUN - Jussive: TIKT:BU 
GE'EZ: Indicative: YENAGGER, Subjunctive: YENGER
ARABIC, Indicative: YAQTULU, Subjunctive: YAQTUL, YAQTULA..
UGARITIC: Indicative: YAQTULU, Subjunctive: YAQTUL, YAQTULA, )QTULA.. 
ACCADIAN: *Indicative*: IPARRAS, *Subjunctive*: IPRUS

I have marked Accadian with asterisks because the usual designation for 
IPARRAS is "present" and for IPRUS  is "preterit", and there is a form 
ending in -U in subordinated clauses which is called "subjunctive" (that 
does not have the modal force we usually ascribe to "subjunctive"). 
However, in the wish- and asservative forms forms (precative, vetitive, and 
cohortative) the short IPRUS-stem is used, connecting it with modality.

The difference in meaning between short and long prefix- forms in the 
Semitic languages is one of modus, not one of tense or aspect (except 
possibly in Accadian). Therefore I think we should speak of just two 
different conjugations that are morphologically different.

And remember: There are short and long prefix-forms in Ugaritic, but it has 
never been *demonstrated* that this difference shows a difference in 
*tense* (that the short form being a preterit). How could that have been 
demonstrated when nobody has ever made tests of these form where *past 
meaning* and *past tense* have been systematically distinguished?

You have taken my challenge to present your model, and I have taken your 
challenge, so for my part, this is the last post in this thread.



Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo.