Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Title: RE: Hebrew Syntax.

Well, Rolf, it seems that you accept discourse analysis as evidence of how forms are used. But if this evidence “can tell us nothing about the meaning of YIQTOL, QATAL, WAYYIQTOL, and WEQATAL”, what can tell us about their meaning? We have no evidence other than the text. So either we have to learn about the meaning from the patterns we find in the text, or we have to conclude that we can have no idea what the text means.

 

You then go on to invite me to reanalyse the text based on an assumption of the results of that analysis. In particular you insist that they assume that “the prefixed WAWs are just conjunctions”, although past studies have demonstrated that these prefixed WAWs have specific discourse functions. That is methodologically untenable. I agree that analysts should not assume the four conjugation model either. But they should work with the real data which they find in the text and not with presuppositions forced on them.

 

Peter Kirk

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Rolf Furuli [mailto:furuli AT online.no]
Sent: 10 April 2002 21:52
To: Biblical Hebrew
Subject: RE: Hebrew Syntax.

 

<snip>

 

But I am very much concerned with the application of discourse analysis in areas where it does not belong, particularly as respects the *meaning* of the parts of the Hebrew verbal system. Discourse analysis is a descriptive method and not a normative one. It can tell us nothing about the meaning of YIQTOL, QATAL, WAYYIQTOL, and WEQATAL. It cannot even tell us if there is a semantic difference between WAYYIQTOL and YIQTOL,  between QATAL  and WEQATAL. It can only describe the pattern of the *use* of these forms in prose texts. This pattern is important, and it is profitable to study it, but we should not behave as if these patterns could tell us anything about the meaning of verbal forms.

 

Just make a simple test: Take a part of the book of Samuel or Kings or another book, skip the usual assumptions that there are four different conjugations, and assume instead that there are just two (WAYYIQTOL = YIQTOL and WEQATAL=QATAL) conjugations (and the prefixed WAWs are just conjunctions). Make your discourse analysis on this basis, and see if your results will be different.

 

<snip>

 

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