Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Henry Churchyard" <churchh AT usa.net>]

[Behind in reading B-Hebrew, as usual...]

> Subject: Re: QATAL C/RT
> From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
> Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 19:31:12 +0200

> WEQATAL 6087              %               QATAL  13922    %

>         PAST      357     5,8             7450           53,5
>         PRESENT   192     3,15            2505           18
>         FUTURE    4100    67.35            965           6,9
>         PERFECT   55      0,9             2605           18,7
>         MODAL     147     2,41
>         IMPERATIVE 643    10,56
>         FINAL     31      0,5
>         COND,PROT 312     5,12
>         COND,APOD 123     2,02
>         GNOMIC    48      0,78
>         OTHER     79      1,29
>                   6087
                                  [Adds up to 13525, 397 forms missing?]

> These statistics are problematic for the traditional of view of
> QATAL as a preterit, the perfective aspect, or a combinations of
> both. The fact that almost half of the QATALs have non-past
> reference, makes it very difficult the claim that QATAL is a
> grammaticalized past tense.  I believe the differences can be
> explained on the basis of syntax and linguistic convention, that is,
> QATAL and WEQATAL are one and the same conjugation which is used in
> different syntactic environments according to the general agreement
> between the persons having the same presupposition pool.

Hmmm, I actually read these statistics differently.  If you say that
"PAST" and "PERFECT" meanings are the proper province of QATAL, and
the other meanings are the proper province of WEQATAL, then at most
((13922-(7450+2605))/13922) or 28% of QATAL forms have "unexpected"
meanings, while only ((357+55)/6087) or 7% of WEQATAL forms have
"unexpected" meanings.  In addition, I'm slightly suspicious of an
aspectually-underdifferentiated "PRESENT" category.  Also, it has to
be taken into account that the category "WEQATAL" to some degree is
ambiguous, containing forms which belong to a special WEQATAL
conjugation semantically distinct from plain QATAL, as well as
containing forms which are simply conjunction + ordinary QATAL.  So
all in all, considering these factors, together with the inevitable
residual "noise" which is to be expected when conducting research of
this kind, I'm actually surprised by how strongly your statistics
distinguish WEQATAL from QATAL.

If you ran a statistical "level of significance" test on the following
table (view with non-proportional font), it would probably come out
fairly strong (the "odds ratio" is about (5675*10065)/(412*3700), or
roughly 35 to 1):

                 WEQATAL       QATAL
             .------------+-------------.
             |            |             |  
   PAST &    |            |             |  
   PERFECT   |    412     |   10065     |  
             |            |             |  
             |            |             |  
             +------------+-------------+
             |            |             |   
  Other      |            |    3470 ?   |  
  Meanings   |   5675     |     or      |  
             |            |    3867 ?   |  
             |            |             |  
             `------------+-------------'

--
Henry Churchyard   churchh AT usa.net   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/