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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Psa 107:19-21 (was WAYYIQTOL)

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: furuli AT online.no
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Psa 107:19-21 (was WAYYIQTOL)
  • Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 13:13:23 -0800

On 14/03/2004 11:18, furuli AT online.no wrote:


...

Dear Peter,

I would like to clear up one point, which is important:

In principle a single contra-example is enough to falsify a claim. ...


Thank you for your clarification. But we differ fundamentally on this principle. It is of course true of certain types of claims in the natural sciences. But I do not accept that it applies even in principle in linguistics, and certainly not to the kinds of hypothesis which you claim to have falsified. For example, you claim to have falsified certain hypotheses of the type that there is a semantic distinction between verb forms A and B (to keep this generic) on the basis of a number of counter-examples. I may contest many of your counter-examples. But the main point is not that, but that a small number of counter-examples does not falsify hypotheses of semantic distinctions. For, I would argue, even after discounting the kinds of counter-example you admit which "are given plausible linguistic explanations" e.g. hypothetical conditional clauses and special genres, there are likely to remain counter-examples which cannot be explained except by the general principle that human language is intrinsically variable and inconsistent, at a level such that no linguistic explanation can describe every nuance.

You can of course argue that on my position hypotheses of semantic distinctions are unfalsifiable and so unscientific. Well, they are falsifiable in principle by testing with native speakers - although not of course in practice with Hebrew as there are no native speakers. So I accept that this is a difficulty with the generally accepted model of the Hebrew verb system. But I would respond that in many fields of human scholarship, especially in social science but also in many branches of physical science, some randomness in data is expected, and a 99% match between a hypothesis and the data is considered to more or less prove the hypothesis, rather than the existence of 1% counter-examples to disprove it. Although I would hope that linguistics can be put on a firmer footing than much social science and perhaps more on the level of physics and chemistry, it is unreasonable to expect data to match hypotheses with the 100% precision which is normally expected only in pure mathematics.

... arguments such as "the language of poetry is different from that of prose, and therefore a verb form has another meaning in poetry than in prose" are not acceptable.


I have not attempted to rely on this argument. But let's examine it anyway. I accept that the language of poetry is fundamentally the same as that of prose. But I would add the following caveats:

1) Poetry, as well as some genres of prose, is typically full of figurative and imaginative language, and that language commonly stretches the bounds of normal semantics. So, for example, I would not be surprised to read "I came tomorrow" in poetry, perhaps in some kind of review of one's life from a distant future perspective.

2) In poetry the normal rules of grammar as well as spelling are sometimes broken for the sake of metre or rhyme. In modern English poetry this is typically signalled e.g. by apostrophes marking abbreviations, but one would not expect such marking to survive in ancient Hebrew poetry.

3) Use of archaic, colloquial and dialect forms is often acceptable in poetry when it is not acceptable in written prose. This is especially significant for biblical Hebrew, in which many scholars recognise the archaic nature of the poems in the Pentateuch and Judges, and the late nature of some Psalms etc. It would seem that most of the prose in the Hebrew Bible (excluding the Late Biblical Hebrew parts) was written, and perhaps in some cases revised, in a rather standardised form of biblical Hebrew; but that much of the poetry was left in less standard forms, in some cases archaic ones, and in other cases possibly innovative forms in more general colloquial or dialect use which were not yet acceptable in prose.

Because of these three factors we can expect to see a significantly greater variety of use of verb and other forms in poetry compared with prose.


As to "a reasonable number" of contra-examples, in my data base there are 956 QATALs with future reference (less than 5 % are equivalent to English future perfect) and 997 WAYYIQTOLs with non-past reference. Your critical mind would of course discard a number of these, but more than enough would remain and show that the traditional views of QATAL and WAYYIQTOL do not hold. So these numbers would in my view be "a reasonable number" of contra-examples.


Well, suppose I am generous and accept 50% or 500 of your supposedly non-past WAYYIQTOLs as unambiguously non-past. That is 500 out of over 15,000 WAYYIQTOLs in the Hebrew Bible, or just over 3%. I do not consider that level of counter-examples sufficient to falsify any linguistic hypothesis, although it is perhaps enough to suggest that the hypothesis needs some refinement. On the other hand, I might find that only 15% of your examples are unambiguously non-past, reducing the level of counter-examples to 1%. I would take that as something close to confirmation of the hypothesis.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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