Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re[2]: YIQTOL with past meaning

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>
  • To: <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re[2]: YIQTOL with past meaning
  • Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 18:12:35 -0500


Dear Rolf,

Thank you for your clear statement of your falsifiable model. I have
read all of this, but I have kept below the sections relevant to my
own arguments.

(I apologise if I seem to be repeating myself, but then so are you.
At least this will save Jonathan looking through the archives.)

Now you claim that your model is falsifiable. I have no quarrel with
that. But a valid model is not only one which is falsifiable in
principle: it is also one which has been tested and not falisified!

As I understand it, you are including all WAYYIQTOL forms when you
write "THE IMPERFECTIVE ASPECT (PREFIX FORMS) REPRESENTS A CLOSE-UP
VIEW OF A SITUATION FROM A SHORT DISTANCE WITH THE DETAILS VISIBLE."
Furthermore, you are saying that this imperfectivity is a semantic
feature which is uncancellable. Please correct me if I have
misunderstood this. So, you are asserting as a falsifiable statement
that every prefix forms in the Hebrew Bible without exception,
including WAYYIQTOL forms, "REPRESENTS A CLOSE-UP VIEW OF A SITUATION
FROM A SHORT DISTANCE WITH THE DETAILS VISIBLE." So, your statement is
falisified if I find one counter-example. Is that correct? I will
concede that we need more than one example because of the possibility
of textual corruption, but two or three should be sufficient to avoid
that possibility.

I would then bring you back to some examples of WAYYIQTOL which I
mentioned before, and to which I did not receive a satisfactory answer
before. Specifically, the large numbers of WAYYIQTOLs in the genealogy
in Genesis 5 (which was hardly a close-up view, even on the most
conservative possible datings this was written more than 2000 years
after the events!) and in the account of the building of the
Tabernacle in Exodus 36-39. If you want specific cases, look at the
examples of WAYYAMOT in Genesis 5:5,8,11 etc. - I don't see how you
can argue that the Aktionsart of this verb implies that details are
visible. These are representative of a very large number of WAYYIQTOLs
in narrative throughout the historical parts of the Hebrew Bible. I
claim that it is simply not true that every one of these "REPRESENTS A
CLOSE-UP VIEW OF A SITUATION FROM A SHORT DISTANCE WITH THE DETAILS
VISIBLE." Indeed, most of them are much closer to your contrary
definition of perfective aspect which "REPRESENTS A BROADER VIEW FROM
SOME DISTANCE WHERE THE DETAILS ARE NOT VISIBLE." I claim therefore
that your falsifiable assertion is falsified, not just by a small
number of cases but by the majority of cases of the most common verb
form in Hebrew, WAYYIQTOL. Thus your statement that WAYYIQTOL is
imperfective, even on your own definition, is false.

I await your response, including an explanation of how these
WAYYIQTOLs can be considered imperfective on your definition.

Peter Kirk



______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: YIQTOL with past meaning
Author: <furuli AT online.no> at Internet
Date: 30/01/2000 13:08

<snip>

It is very important for me to have reference points, that is, I need
a clearly defined frame for my research by which I myself and others
can check my results. Thus my method comes close to those being used
by the natural sciences, and I strive to fulfill Karl Popper's demand
of falsifiability. Therefore I am very sceptical to models that
exclusively are based on induction, as a means to pinpoint the
*meaning* of Hebrew verbs. That is the reason why I find discourse
analysis to be an excellent tool to describe the linguistic convention
of Hebrew (how forms are used), but to be completely impotent as
regards explaining whether Hebrew has two, four, or five conjugations
and the *meaning* of each form.

As a basis for my study I use two assumptions: (1) Hebrew is a
language that can be studied by help of the same methods as other
languages, and (2) Semantic meaning is connected with morphology and
is uncancelable (a property of a particular form that is *semantic*
can never be lost or changed, but will allways be a part of that
form).

<snip>

This conclusion, however, does not necessarily mean that (1), (2),
(3), and (4) above have to be rejected, and that QATAL should now be
viewed as Dick and YIQTOL as Harry, to use your words. To the
contrary, QATAL and YIQTOL do have the general characteristics of the
perfective and imperfective aspect respectively. So we need not
introduce any allegorical or spirital dimensions that would change the
nature of QATAL and YIQTOL from being aspects to being Dick and Harry.
The normal linguistic procedure when one property of a form must be
rejected, is to try to find the most narrow generalization that can
account for all the characteristics of that form, and this is exactly
what I have done with the definition:

THE IMPERFECTIVE ASPECT (PREFIX FORMS) REPRESENTS A CLOSE-UP VIEW OF A
SITUATION FROM A SHORT DISTANCE WITH THE DETAILS VISIBLE. THE
PERFECTIVE ASPECT (SUFFUX FORMS) REPRESENTS A BROADER VIEW FROM SOME
DISTANCE WHERE THE DETAILS ARE NOT VISIBLE.

<snip>

Your explanation may be quite close to mine. However, there seems to
be at least one important difference, namely, the view of how aspect
is expressed. The strength of my model, I believe, is that its parts
are clearly defined, and therefore it is falsifyable. The basis for
its falsifyability is that aspect is connected with *form*, not with
*function*, but if I understand you correctly, this is not the case in
your model...

<snip>





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page