Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Friday 16 May 2003 16:53, Sameer Yadav wrote:
> Greetings, b-hebrew list-members!
>
> I am a ThM student in a small S.Calif. seminary, and I
> am presently beginning thesis work on the semantics of
> modality in biblical Hebrew.
>
> This well-trod ground is for me relatively new (but
> exciting), and I writing to solicit help from the
> Hebraists on this list whose work has centered on
> mapping the semantics of tense, aspect, and mood to
> the morpho-syntax of the verbal system.  In narrowing
> the scope of my thesis I have taken my cues from G.
> Hatav’s excellent dissertation work, which suggests
> further study for the use of the suffixed form in
> expressing the modality of counterfactuals, which is
> also cited as a curious usage by Waltke and O’Connor.

Hatav's book was the major springboard for advancement of my own theory, 
which 
builds on my 1994 _Hebrew Studies_ article.  Briefly, I reject the 
sequentiality part of her theory, but the modality portion provides a simple 
but powerful way to develop a view of the 3 other major forms (my article 
deals with the wayyiqtol only).

> At present I am roadblocked by matters of approach –
> my questions are these: 1) how do I go about selecting
> an adequate corpus; 

To establish a basic syntactic model, I recommend beginning only with prose.  
In every language with which I am familiar, poetry often (and usually by 
design) creates its own syntax, which can and does throw an otherwise good 
prose model off into the briny deep, so to speak.

> 2) once I do, is there any
> *computational* way to collect a complete data-set for
> analyzing usage statistics, so that I can somehow
> avoid combing through every single use of a qtl form?

Do you mean using a computer, or building a generalized model extrapolated 
from a limited example corpus?

> 3) is the attempt to map the semantics of
> counterfactuals to the morpho-syntax of the suffixed
> conjugation somehow a misguided or a wrong-headed way
> of handling a grammatical description?

I only know one way to find out :-)

I'd be glad to discuss these matters off-list if you like, as well as 
contributing whatever I can to on-list discussion.

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur