Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Rolf,

Thank you for your posting. I am interested to see that you seem to be 
coming closer to my view. You are saying that in many Semitic 
languages including Hebrew there was a short prefix verb form, 
distinct from a longer prefix form used in non-past and iterative 
contexts, and that this short form was used both in modal contexts and 
in past narrative contexts. This seems to be the crucial evidence that 
we should, at least as a working hypothesis, allow that very likely 
the Hebrew short YIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL is a separate conjugation from 
the long YIQTOL with separate semantics. Of course if we then find 
that there is no semantic difference between the two, we may conclude 
that they are actually variant forms of one conjugation. But it is 
premature to base studies on the presupposition that they are one 
conjugation.

Then of course we have to analyse the short prefix conjugation in each 
language to see how it could have been used as both modal and 
preterit. I note that for irrealis conditions several Indo-European 
languages use a past tense, or what appears to be a past tense such as 
the subjunctive in English "if I had..." or "if I were...". Greek uses 
imperfect. Russian uses the past tense plus a particle "by"; this 
combination is known as the subjunctive and is widely used also in 
volitive and purpose clauses. So maybe this double usage is not quite 
as odd as it seems.

It seems that there is a fruitful field for further study here.

Peter Kirk



______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[3]: (long) Re[3]: WAW  the conjunction
Author:  <furuli AT online.no> at Internet
Date:    17/01/2000 21:55


Dear Peter,

See below:

<snip>

It is correct that both Ugaritic and Accadian each have a short YQTL which 
is termed "preterit". Ugaritic is more difficult to handle than Accadian 
because of the lack of vowels. The contrast between the short and long form 
in Ugaritic is the ending (YQTL vs YQTLW) while the difference in Accadian 
is a vowel (which is seen in the script) and gemination, (IPRUS v s 
IPARRAS). A parallel has been drawn between these short forms ( Ugaritic: 
YQTL, Accadian a IPRUS and Hebrew WAYYIQTOL /because H. tends to use the 
short form, though not allways/), and I agree (and I also add the short 
YENGER (vs YENAGGER) of Ge'ez) . They are all short forms and they are all 
to a great extent used with past reference, and in addition - all (Ugaritic 
YQTL is somewhat ambiguous in this respect) are the stems used for modality.

<snip>

Regarding the Ugaritic "preterit" T.L. Fenton, 1963 "The Ugaritic Verbal 
System" (Doctoral thesis), pp 56,82, found 561 examples of YQTL  with past 
meaning, 191 with future meaning, and 70 with past continuous meaning. The 
Ge'ez YENGER  can similarly be used for past, present, and future, and the 
same is true regarding Hebrew WAYYIQTOL. As long as nobody has made a 
scientific study from the point of view of "past tense versus past meaning" 
in any of the four languages, it is very doubtful to claim that *any* of 
these forms is a preterit.

A very interesting and most challenging fact is that in all four languages 
morphological forms that to a great extent are used with past reference are 
the very forms used to express the subjunctive, optative and vetitive 
(negative "jussive") moods. This is a matter I will study thoroughly in the 
future to reach a conclusion, but so far it seems likely that these short 
forms (including WAYYIQTOL) *are* subjunctives. At first sight this seems 
very strange. How can narrative accounts which are the hallmark of 
indicative expression to a great extent be expressed by forms that are 
modal? Galia's model, if it be correct, could solve this problem by 
equating the -AY- element  of WAYYIQTOL with the definite article. However, 
no such solution is available for Accadian and Ge'ez.

If my view of WAYYIQTOL  as a simple WAW+YIQTOL (imperfective aspect) be 
true, and the end of the events simply is ignored by the verb but suggested 
by the conjunction, Hebrew ( or rather, Semitic) narrative is of a very 
special nature.
It seems to me that the line of demarcation between indicative and 
injunctive (all kinds of modality) is somewhat differently drawn in the 
Semitic languages compared with Indo-European ones. That is, some 
expressions which in the Indo-European languages are indicative are 
included in the modal category in the Semitic languages. One promising area 
for study to approach a solution, is the study of *speech acts* ( See J.R. 
Searle, 1979, Expression and Meaning  Studies in the theory of Speech acts, 
Cambridge) which can be viewed as modal expressions. (Regarding different 
kinds of modality I recommend F.R. Palmer, 1986, "Mood and Modality", 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). A study of the use of the 
negatives  )L and L) of cohortative (with WAYYIQTOL  and other verbs) and 
different modal particles can help us understand what is included in Hebrew 
injunctive.

<snip>