Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

I would view such examples of doublets in which a different verb form 
is used, especially between Samuel-Kings and Chronicles, not as free 
variation "without any difference in meaning", but as evidence that 
and how verbal semantics changed with time (or possibly dialect, as 
Cynthia might argue). If your (1) and (2), or (3) and (4), are really 
synonymous, why did the Chronicler (or whoever) change the perfectly 
acceptable Vorlage? No, more likely the Chronicler partly modernised 
the Vorlage by replacing the verb forms, much as a modern English 
writer might replace "thee" and "thou" by "you" when rewriting an old 
text.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
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Subject: Re: (long) HEBREW ASPECTS
Author:  <furuli AT online.no> at Internet
Date:    19/02/2000 16:28

<snip>

.. The best place to see this, is in accounts that occur two times in the 
Tanach.

<snip>

.. a perfective or imperfective verb can be used without any difference 
in meaning, as is seen in (1) and (2)...

<snip>

(1) 1Kings 9:8 And though this house is (YIQTOL) so high,

(2) 2Chr. 7:21 And this house, which is (QATAL) so high,

The verb "to ascend" is durative and dynamic but not telic. Consider (3) 
and (4)  where the situations are telic. Do the different aspects give the 
clauses different meanings? Hardly!...

<snip>

.. Thus the aspects contribute nothing that we do not know on the basis of 
Aktionsart and context and therefore they can be used interchangeably.

From the observation above we can formulate the following rule: "When the 
imperfective and perfective aspect do not add any new information, but all 
the information the writer wants to convey can be gathered from other 
factors (Aktionsart, context, linguistic convention etc) both aspects can 
be used without any difference in meaning (though there may be a difference 
in use due to the linguistic convention, and this can be seen by discourse 
analyzis)." The aspects are not *neutralized* because their own meaning is 
there, but it is not necessary information because it does not add anything 
new. To use the terminology from my previous post: the progressive nature 
of the imperfective aspect is accounted for because of the durative nature 
of the verb. So we need not use much energy to find a difference in meaning 
in every instance when different aspects are used.

(3) 2Kings 12:17 Then Hazael king of Syria went up (YIQTOL), and fought 
against Gath, and took it; and Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem.

(4) 2Chr. 24:23 And it came to pass at the end of the year, that the army 
of the Syrians came up (QATAL) against him: and they came to Judah and 
Jerusalem, and destroyed all the princes of the people from among the 
people, and sent all the spoil of them unto the king of Damascus.

<snip>