Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Another weakness of Waltke and O'Connor is that it rubbishes then
ignores discourse analysis, and (in my opinion at least) its treatment
of Hebrew verbs is thereby seriously flawed.

Peter Kirk

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Trevor Peterson [mailto:06PETERSON AT cua.edu]
> Sent: 09 April 2002 20:23
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: RE: Hebrew Syntax.
> 
> >===== Original Message From c stirling bartholomew
> <cc.constantine AT worldnet.att.net> =====
> >The esteemed R.Buth of Jerusalem made a comment a while back about
> >Waltke/O'Connor which, in keeping with R.Buth's characteristically
> cryptic
> >style was somewhat difficult to unpack.
> >
> >I believe he used the word "brittle" in reference to Waltke/O'Connor.
> >
> >Does anyone know what this means?
> 
> I guess I should have asked him about his remarks on-list. Being a
student
> of
> O'Connor, I was curious to find out what he meant and asked this very
> thing
> myself in an off-list conversation. I hope it's not out of line to
say,
> briefly, that he objects to the way that some of the material is
presented
> (although from what I can tell, I don't think there would be glaring
> differences between his views and O'Connor's--it's probably more in
the
> presentation). As I recall, one of his major objections was to the way
W-
> O'C
> explains the stems/binyanim. I tend to agree that a student could get
the
> impression from the discussion in W-O'C that the stems were generally
> productive. We talked about some other issues, but one thing to keep
in
> mind
> about W-O'C is that it intentionally omits pragmatics as a general
rule.
> (This
> is not because O'Connor is unconcerned with pragmatics; I can't speak
for
> Waltke.)
> 
> Anyway, the long and short is that I was reasonably satisfied with the
way
> he
> explained his criticisms after further questioning, although I never
got
> the
> feeling that I quite knew what he meant by "brittle" in his original
> assessment.
> 
> Trevor Peterson
> CUA/Semitics
>