Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com>]

Dave, I don't have a single grammatical framework. I'm not sure how far that
is a helpful concept. When I was in SIL I learned to be careful of
frameworks and to keep close to the real data. On the other hand, I can't
claim independence of frameworks. In general terms, something more
cognitive.

As for wayyiqtol and weqatal, we have been through this before. I would hold
that at the syntactic level weqatal is simply w- + qatal. There is more
going on, but only at the semantic level, but that level is irrelevant to
syntax and so to the question of basic word order, if we are looking through
your framework. Perhaps wayyiqtol is simply w- + yiqtol, but if so the
yiqtol here is not the regular imperfective one but alternative form which
is shortened in some verbs and when without w- is known as the jussive.
Again, the meaning is not simply the conjunction + jussive, but that is
irrelevant to the syntactic question. Or perhaps wayyiqtol is w- + a verb
form which, by some historical accident, had fallen out of use except with
the affixed w-. Or perhaps wayyiqtol is some other conjunction wa-, cf.
Arabic fa (?) as I think you have argued, + "jussive" yiqtol. Perhaps it's
something different. We will probably never know.

I might suggest that the verb in wayyiqtol and weqatal occurs at the front
of the clause because these verb forms are used when the verb is the
constituent in focus; and the focus structure also requires that the clause
starts with w-. That would be why the verb part of wayyiqtol never occurs
alone, except perhaps as an actual jussive. Maybe, maybe not.

Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:b-hebrew-
> bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Dave Washburn
> Sent: 30 May 2003 13:35
> To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] VSO vs SVO
> 
> On Friday 30 May 2003 03:46, Peter Kirk wrote:
> > Dave, if you want to avoid trouble from the moderators I suggest you
> avoid
> > implying that you understand this but the rest of us don't. Now you may
> > understand Chomsky etc better than the rest of us except perhaps Liz,
> but
> > there is more to understanding than Chomsky.
> >
> > If you wish to argue that within your particular framework there is a
> > theoretical construct called "basic word order" and you are trying to
> > determine that within your framework, then that's fine but say so. In
> that
> > case criticisms of your framework are irrelevant. But the rest of us are
> > free to ignore as irrelevant those results which depend on your
> framework
> > and are meaningful only within it.
> 
> I thought I did say so.  That was the frustrating part.  And of course
> folks
> like you are free to reject the framework.  In your particular case, I'm
> hoping to find out why and what your alternative framework is.  I'm always
> interested in learning something new.
> 
> > As for your suggestion that basic word order can only be found in
> sentences
> > without affixes, that doesn't really make sense. You will find hardly
> any
> > such sentences in your already limited Hebrew corpus. You might find a
> few
> > in English. In many languages the grammar implies that there are none at
> > all. Anyway, I wouldn't call the Hebrew conjunction an affix, it is more
> > like a clitic - though I agree that there is more going on in WAYYIQTOL.
> 
> We're agreed on the phenomenology of the wayyiqtol then.  I would include
> the
> weqatal in the category of "more going on," how about you?
> 
> 
> --
> Dave Washburn
> http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur