Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Randall:

I would like to give a few comments to your post.




>Thirdly, I also find the implications of 'subjective' misleading. Again,
>while "pure aspect" is subjective, the 97% overlap with past time is more
>than a subjective accident.

The combination of the English aspect system, represented by the present
participle (imperfective) and perfect (perfective), with tense, gives a
clear (practically unambiguous) signal of whether the action in question
was terminated or was in progress at reference time. Therefore the reporter
is very restricted in his/her choices. From English verbs we learn much
about the objective nature of actual situations.

The Greek verbal system i less restricted - actions and states described by
perfective verbs need not be terminated at reference time, and imperfective
verbs can include the end. The Hebrew verbal system, as far as aspect is
concerned is completely free; there is absolute no restriction in the use
of YIQTOL, WAYYIQTOL, QATAL,  and WEQATAL. This means that we cannot, as in
the case of the English verbal system, know from the verb form alone
whether an action or state is/was terminated or in progress at reference
time. This is what I mean by "subjective aspect". You are correct that
certain forms tend to be used in certain situations (e.g. 95 % of the
WAYYIQTOLs with past meaning). But before you have considered (and created
scientific tests) to see whether the tendency to use particular forms for
particular functions is *linguistic convention*, you have no compelling
reason to draw any conclusion as to the tense or aspect of a particular
form. Alviero's very consistent system of the discourse functions of the
different forms is a very fine example of linguistic convention. Remember
also that in the book of Daniel we find consistently the participles (FNE
W:)FMAR with the meaning "he answered and said". This is linguistic
convention, and we cannot draw the conclusion that the participles
represent grammaticalized past tense.



>
>>I don't have access to "The Hebrew Verb in Current Discussions", Journal
>of
>>Translation and Text-linguistics 5:91-105. If that is your article, do you
>
>>have a copy that can be emailed to me?
>
>I'll send an e-copy offlist, though without the journal pagination.

Could you also please send me a copy? I got one a long time ago before my
hard-drive broke down. At present I am refining the part of my dissertation
where I discuss the different views of Hebrew verbs, and I would like to
present your view correctly.


>
>>Rolf responded:
>>
>>"I would say that WAYYIQTOL is *imperfective* just as YIQTOL and
>>represents
>>the subjective imperfective view of the reporter."
>
>I truly admire Rolf's industry on this question. BUT, YET, HOWEVER . . .
>This is a very good example of how a small point can turn a system around
>on itself. It is also a good example of how researchers are able to
>inadvertantly hide themselves from reality by declaring a language so dead
>that it can be subjectively manipulated by the researcher.
>Thus, someone may innocently say,
>"Who can say that the ancient Hebrew speaker didn't "think" of vayyiqtol as
>imperfective. Logic cannot dictate whatever story style ancient Hebrew did
>or did not have." True, theorectically.

My basic assumption is not that logic must dictate my conclusions (although
logic of course must be used), but rather that to understand the meaning of
the Hebrew verbal system, we must start with a study of *all* the
fundamental linguistic units, and after studying them all, we can conclude
whether a particular function show a particular semantic meaning. Such a
study has never been undertaken, so I am in the fortunate position of
plowing new fields.

>
>Well, the LXX already in the early 3rd century BCE translated vayyiqtol
>with augmented aorist indicative (=Greek perfective/whole-past,  and cannot
>be equated with the Greek imperfective, whether augmented imperfect [past
>open-ended] or present). The LXX didn't do that 100% of the time, but close
>enough to get the idea.

There is no linguistic convention in Greek comparable to the great use of
YIQTOL or participles with past meaning in Biblical Aramaic, or to the
great use of the prefix-conjugation in Ugaritic (see the big Ugaritic
grammar published this year, I am not at my office so I do not remember the
title), or to the narrative use of infinitive absolute in Pheonician. When
translating from these languages into Greek, the Aorist would be the best
choice. As to the Aramaic of Daniel, how do the LXX (Q) translate (FNE
W:)FMAR? The (FNE is often translated by an aorist passive participle and
W:)FMAR by aorist indicative. Can we from this draw the conclusion that the
two Aramaic participles are perfective? Certainly not, but this is the best
Greek can do with its verbal system! I accept the conclusions of Porter and
Broman Olsen that Aorist does not code for past tense, only for the
perfective aspect. The use of Aorist to translate Hebrew narrative accounts
is no problem in my eyes. The nature of the narrative is consecution and
past reference. Greek imperfect does not have the wide use of the Hebrew
prefix-conjugation (YIQTOL  and WAYYIQTOL), so the best choice in Greek is
Aorist. In no way does the LXX prove that WAYYIQTOL is perfective, more
than it proves that Aramaic active participles are perfective.


>
>And Greek is an 'aspect' language, par excellance!! Aspect plays a much
>stronger and more definite role in Greek than in Hebrew or Aramaic. Notice
>how Hebrew "ten" 'give!' must be translated either by 'dos!' '(simple)
>give!' or 'didou!' '(open-ended) be giving!'
>
>The Aramaic targums, likewise, regularly use the "suffix tense" for the
>vayyiqtol. Thus, vayyomer is va'amar in Aramaic.
>
>Here, you have two major, ancient, cultural votes against the
>'imperfective' theory by bilinguals from a time period when the literary
>Hebrew language was still living and being used. (NB: Qumran still used the
>vayyiqtol literary language and wrote AFTER the LXX and also have a
>'contemporary' copy of an Aramaic Job, though I date the general targum
>phenomena to post-70 CE. ) The "imperfective" counter-proposal is all based
>on making marginal examples/questions into the system itself. (And 'fudging
>the data', see below.)

Several years ago I compared all the verb forms of the Targum of Job and
the MT. I have to check the material to know whether there are any errors,
but here are my numbers (first column-the Aramaic forms, second column -
the Hebrew forms:

JOB             MT

QATAL           WAYYIQTOL 9
QATAL           QATAL 37
QATAL           YIQTOL 9
WEQATAL         WAYYIQTOL 10
WEQATAL         YIQTOL 2
YIQTOL          WAYYIQTOL 1
YIQTOL          QATAL 2
WEYIQTOL        WEYIQTOL 1
WEYIQTOL        QATAL 1
WEYIQTOL        YIQTOL 1

Note that just as there are 9 WAYYIQTOLs in the MT which the Job Targum
translates as QATALs, there are 9 YIQTOLs which are translated by QATALs as
well. There is no pattern in this Targum suggesting that WAYYIQTOL is
perfective just as QATAL. The other Targums are too young to be of any
importance.





>
>There is even a modern confirmation because written Arabic still uses the
>"lam yaktub" form for the simple negative past. They don't know 'why?' the
>jussive form is used with this negative for a past meaning. It just is.
>They learn it, use it, internalize it and 'map it to referential
>situations', but they don't get to know its history unless they study
>comparative Semitics. (NB: the Hebrew vayyiqtol is also noted for generally
>following the jussive prefix form rather than the 'regular' prefix form.
>Quite a surprising "accident".)
>
>Anyway, Hebrew was an underdifferentiated language for relating to
>referential worlds, which means that the researcher should expect a
>relatively high proportion of 'fuzzy', 'marginal' examples. That, of
>course, is what we get. What we cannot do, though, is try to reinterpret
>marginal examples through a non-historical, non-Hebrew lens, in which
>vayyiqtol is an imperfective. That isn't playing the same game or dealing
>with the same language.
>
>The above give historical reasons besides that 'fact' of the Massoretic
>vocalization. The MT, by the way, is 'pre-grammatical' and preserves many
>forms that went against their common sense or against medieval  grammarians
>yet are shown to be true by comparative Semitics [e.g. qal passives,
>hishtaf`al binyan, Hifta`al binyan]. The MT passes on a tradition and does
>not invent one.
>
>Finally, I would claim that the above is reconstructible by USING Biblical
>Hebrew. That is, using/hearing enough vayyiqtols in correct contexts and
>everyday contexts so colors the form that it gets psychologically mapped to
>the meaning as a 97% implicature by language learners and children. And
>vayyiqtol ends up in CONTRAST to normal narrative yiqtol for repetitive
>past, yet it is in complemenatry distribution with qatal and narrative
>yiqtol is in complementary distribution with veqatalTI.
>I believe that most of the problems with 'understanding' the biblical
>Hebrew verb, arise from not having had to LIVE with it. Describing it, of
>course, is a different matter. Linguistics hasn't finished with English and
>I see no better hope for Hebrew. Fjortunately, I can use and understand a
>language without knowing the ultimate, best description of a language.
>

To speak modern Hebrew fluently is a great advantage in the study of
biblical Hebrew, but I will strongly dispute your model of learning
biblical Hebrew through modern Hebrew "the natural way". For three
semesters I had two Norwegian students who grew up in Israel. They
certainly had some problems with the grammar that the other students did
not have (we use Joüon/Muraoka, Waltke/O´Connor and Meyer as grammars). And
interestingly, at their exam the other sensor, who did not know them,
commented on all the wrong interference from modern Hebrew. A child learns
a language without knowing a single grammatical rule. A dead language
cannot be learned this way! Only if the assumption that modern Hebrew is
identical with biblical Hebrew is true, then the students will profit from
this method. If that is not true, the students are  lead astray from the
very beginning, just as when we learn to see biblical Hebrew thorugh the
eyes of our modern Germanic language.




Regards

Rolf



Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo