Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ken Penner" <pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca>]

Hi Sameer,

> I am a ThM student in a small S.Calif. seminary, and I
> am presently beginning thesis work on the semantics of

> I have taken my cues from G.
> Hatav’s excellent dissertation work, 

Hatav has in the past been a participant on B-Hebrew, and you can find some
discussions of her work in the B-Hebrew archives. The excellence of her
_Semantics_ was a matter of dispute at that time. I imagine you've also read
Niccacci's review (http://www.custodia.org/sbf/edit/LA1999.html). I was
intrigued by her thesis, but was frustrated by her repeated assertion (1,
195) that she demonstrates that BH lacks tenses (where and how does she do
so?)

> 1) how do I go about selecting
> an adequate corpus; 

You're right, problems emerge if one tries to generalize to the entire
Hebrew language traits which are peculiar to particular circumstances. I
have said before that there is reason to think that verbs are used
differently not only in different periods (pre-exilic, post-exilic, Qumran,
Mishnaic), but also in (1) different genres (narrative, poetry, legislation,
instruction, direct discourse, non-literary texts); (2) different
geographical areas; (3) position in the sentence; (4) protasis vs. apodosis
of conditional sentences; (5) dependent (e.g. purpose or result) vs.
independent clauses; (6) stative vs. non-stative vs. copular verbs. 
You could narrow yourself to one category, or broaden your corpus to more
than one category, as long as you take care not to transfer inferences about
verbal use from one into another, by treating each category separately
before attempting any generalizations.
Too often studies in the past have restricted the corpus to one genre or
another (usually early prose sections of the Hebrew Bible,  or exclusively
poetic texts), and inappropriately generalized the results from one genre to
the whole language.

As for corpus size, the larger your sample, of course, the narrower your
confidence interval. Statisticians have developed formulae to determine an
adequate sample size: For example, visit
http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm 

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? 

Sure, you can reduce the tedium somewhat by using a computer database. You
may want to look at my dissertation proposal on the semantics of DSS verb
forms, at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PennerThesis/files/Penner%20Proposal%20Final.p
df or
http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/westerholm/thesis/Penner%20Proposal%20Fina
l.pdf
I'm beginning from a previously tagged text (in my case, from Accordance),
and adding my own tags. But I can't avoid looking at every individual verb
in my corpus, and I suspect the same is true in your case.

> 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 don't think it's wrong-headed. I think it has potential. I'm intrigued
because one of my supervisors (Steve Fassberg) has noted that there are no
unreal conditionals attested at Qumran, and your findings might have
implications for my own topic.

For bibliography, you may already be aware of these:

Zuber, Beat. 1986. Das Tempussystem des biblischen Hebräisch: Eine
Untersuchung dem Text. [The tense system of Biblical Hebrew: an
investigation into the text.] (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für die
alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 164.)Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Hatav, Galia. 1989. "Aspects, Aktionsarten, and the Time Line." Linguistics
27.487-516.

Hatav, Galia 2000 Time movement in Biblical Hebrew. Hebrew Linguistics. 47:
63-84.

Ljungberg, Bo Krister. 1995. "Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Some Theories
of the Biblical Hebrew Verbal System." Journal of Translation and
Textlinguistics 7.82-96. 

Givón, Talmy. "Tense-Aspect-Modality: The Creole Prototype and Beyond" from
_Tense-Aspect:  Between Semantics and Pragmatics_, ed. Hopper, 1982.

Bar, Tali. “Expression of temporality, modality and perfectivity in
comtemporary Hebrew conditionals as compared with non-conditionals.” Wiener
Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 91 (2001) 49-83

Hendel, Ronald S. 1996. "In the Margins of the Hebrew Verbal System:
Situation, Tense, Aspect, Mood." Zeitschrift für Althebraistik 9.152-81. 

Rattray, Susan. 1993. "The Tense-Mood-Aspect System of Biblical Hebrew, with
Special Emphasis on 1 and 2 Samuel." PhD dissertation, University of
California, Berkeley

Hendel, Ronald S. 1996. "In the Margins of the Hebrew Verbal System:
Situation, Tense, Aspect, Mood." Zeitschrift für Althebraistik 9.152-81. 

Peckham, Brian. 1997. "Tense and Mood in Biblical Hebrew." Zeitschrift für
Althebraistik 10.139-68. 

Steiner, R. C. 1995. “The History of the Ancient Hebrew Modal System and
Labov’s Rule of Compensatoy Structural Change” in Towards a Social Science
of Language: Papers in Honor of William Labov (2 vols.; ed. G. R. Guy, C.
Feagin, D. Schiffrin, and J. Baugh; Amsterdam: Benjamins). 

Cook, John A. “The Hebrew Verbal System: A Grammaticalization Approach.”
Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 2002.

Some other authors recommended by Matthew Anstey for modality:

Johan van der Auwera, Jan Nuyts, McGregor, Verstraete, Halliday.

Ken Penner, M.C.S. (Regent College), M.A. (McMaster)
Ph.D. (cand.), Religious Studies, 
Biblical Field (Early Judaism major)
McMaster University
Hamilton, Canada
pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca
Vocabulary Memorisation Software: 
http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/westerholm/flash or http://sensoft.nav.to