Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Brian,

See my comments below:


>Dear Rolf, thank you for taking time out of your busy
>schedule to keep us posted as to your research.  In the
>past, I studied some four to five hundred weyiqtols in the
>"prose-only" books, including the corpus to which many
>linguists who study BH limit themselves.  The corpus I used
>is basically Gen through Ki (so popular among linguists),
>plus I included Chron.  I realize that my corpus for study
>is more restricted than yours.  I found the weyiqtols in
>this more restricted corpus to be approximately 98% modal.
>Assuming for the moment that both your categorization and my
>categorization of the weyiqtols are correct and similar, can
>you explain the different percentage of modal weyiqtols
>found in my slightly more restricted corpus vs. your
>all-inclusive corpus?  Would you surmise that the difference
>may be the effect of linguistic convention that prevails in
>my corpus rather than the grammatical meaning of the form
>itself?  I am inclined to believe that my 98% figure is
>indeed the result of linguistic conventions that are at work
>in my chosen corpus because, while I have not performed a
>dedicated examination of the forms in other books, simply my
>day-to-day reading has suggested to me that weyiqtols are
>*not* 98% of the time modal.
>
>Now let's not assume that our two categorizations of the
>weyiqtols as modal or indicative are the same.  Might you be
>able to break out your statistics for Gen-Ki plus Chron
>minus any short poetic sections (such as Exo 15, Jdg 5,
>etc.) to compare with my finding of 98% modal?
>
>Shalom,
>Bryan
>
>> Dear list-members,
>>
>>
>> A short time ago there was a discussion about WEYIQTOL,
>whether or not it
>> is a fifth conjugation, expressing modality. I have
>finished my study and
>> mapping of all the examples of the MT, save about 100
>which are listed by
>> Accordance as WAYYIQTOLs, to which I will return. Perhaps
>some of you would
>> be interested to hear the some of the results.
>>
>> There is no significant difference in the occurrences of
>the form, which
>> can be related to the age of the books,or to a change in
>the meaning of the
>> verbal system through time. Of the 1217 examples, I
>interpreted 434 (35,6%)
>> as indicative and 783 (64,3%) as modal (including
>volition,finality,
>> purpose etc
>
><snip>
>
>
>B. M. Rocine
>Associate Pastor
>Living Word Church
>6101 Court St. Rd.
>Syracuse, NY 13206



In the books: Torah-Joshua-Judges-Samuel-Kings-Chronicles-Ruth (-Exodus 15
and Judges 5) I found 444 WEYIQTOLs. Of these I interpret 37 (8,3 %) to be
indicative (28-future, 2 present, 2 gnomic , 5 past).
In the rest of the books 53,7 % of the forms are interpreted as indicative
(20% future,0,7 % perfect, 3,2 % present,5,5 % gnomic, 4,3 % past, and 1,7
% other).

Your corpus has a great amount of narrative text, and the WEYIQTOLs occur
for the most part in direct speech in this corpus. In the rest of the books
the narrative accounts are more restricted, but the prophetic part is
great.(I take prophecies about the future expressed by God or the prophets
as future indicative.)

But why this great difference in the number of the forms related to
different books? As a matter of fact there is no distinction between
WAYYIQTOLs and WEYIQTOLs in unpointed texts. The first time the distinction
appears is in the MT. This means that at a point of time after the texts
were writtten and latest at the appearance of the Masoretes, the
distinction between WEYIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL was made, either in
pronunciation or in script (I guess there had been a difference  in stress
in the recitation of the text in the synagogue for a long time before the
Masoretes. But on which basis was the differentiation made?

A hypothesis, which I am going to test, is that the difference is primarily
based on rhytm or stress, and this again is related to the genre of the
text and the meaning of clauses. The pausal forms. for instance, signal a
particular stress the end of sentences. To find the right rhytm in
narrative accounts, one device could have been a retraction of the stress
of the sentence-initial verb, thus the WAYYIQTOL was born. But what about
the WEYIQTOL? There are several clues. In 302 instances WEYIQTOL occurs
after an imperative, and they express finality, purpose or volition
(indicative in only 4 instances). In 510 instances WEYIQTOLs follow another
YIQTOL (including 247 in the indicative mood). In 208 instances WEYIQTOL is
sentence-initial, in most cases with another WEYIQTOL in the previous
clause. The mentioned environments constitute 80 % of the occurrence of
WEYIQTOL, and in these cases, those making the distinction had definite
clues. Only in 25 cases does a WEYIQTOL come after a QATAL. In the
remaining instances, however, there are many strange cases, because clear
indications are lacking. This is also seen in other systems of pointing
such as in Palestinian pointing. In Paul Kahle, 1930, "Masoreten des
Westens..,", pp 20-35,42, we find a manuscript with Palestinian pointing
containing Daniel 9:24-12:13 (only some words are pointed). We find 3
WEYIQTOLs and 1 WAYIQTOL where MT has such forms as well. But in 6
instances does this manuscript  have WAYYIQTOLs where MT has WEYIQTOLs (the
context is future).

I therefore conclude that the difference in the percentage of the WEYIQTOLs
in the different books primarily is due to linguistic convention. The
reason for the between 5 and 10 percent *strange* WAYYIQTOLs and *strange*
WEYIQTOLS that primarily are found in non-narrative texts and in direct
speech in narrative texts, is that the differentiation between the two
forms is not original, but is introduced after the writing of the
manuscripts. Therefore, in accounts that lack the clues (narrative for
WAYYIQTOL and preceding imperative, YIQTOL or WEYIQTOL for WEYIQTOL) the
differentiation is somewhat arbitrary, and when we today study these texts
systematically we find many forms that deviate from the pattern.



Regards

Rolf



Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo