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  • From: Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Modality and the verbal system
  • Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 10:37:31 -0600

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




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