Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Eduard C Hanganu" <eddhanganu AT hotmail.com>]

Dear Ethan:

Honestly, I took the opportunity offered to me by the topic to refer to a 
difficulty I have been having with the aspect of the verb. The meaning of 
the verb is important, of course, but though NITZDAK is a hapax, the 
semantic unit that constitutes the discourse fragment from Daniel 8:9-14 
offers enough information for its meaning, which must be in the area of 
'restoration' of the 'holy' from the trampling of the little horn.

My interest, though, was less in the meaning of the verb as in its aspect. 
Is the verb describing a progressive action, a short, telic event, an open 
event ( with a beginning and no defined end )? I thought that an analysis of 
the morphology of the verb would indicate the aspect of its described action 
in spite of the fact that the meaning of the verb might seem imprecise.

We must also consider the fact that while the 'sense' of a word is not 
dependent on the context, its 'meaning' is context dependent, and that the 
context generally disambiguates meaning even to the degree that a word whose 
sense is totally unknown may acquire meaning through the limits imposed on 
its possible range of meanings by the context. So, in this analysis the 
meaning of the verb under discussion may not be so important if the focus is 
the morphological analysis of the word.

To repeat myself, what does the morphology of the verb NITZDAK indicate 
about its aspect:
is the verb describing a progressive action or process, a short, telic 
event, an open event ( with a beginning and no defined end ), a punctiliar 
action, etc.?

What is your perspective in this matter?

Regards,

Eduard

From: Noam Eitan <bhebrew AT yahoo.com>
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Aspect
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 11:13:11 -0700 (PDT)


>One of the verbs that have preocupied me in this sense is the NITZDAK of
>Daniel 8:14 ( the niphal waw consec perfect 3rd person masculine singular 
of
>the verb TZADEIK).



I don't think this NITZDAK is a good launching pad for a discussion about 
aspect, because the meaning of both is controversial. We need examples where 
the meaning can be clearly gleaned at least from the context to discuss such 
a topic. - Noam Eitan, Brooklyn, NY




---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
_______________________________________________
b-hebrew mailing list
b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew

_________________________________________________________________
Getting married? Find great tips, tools and the latest trends at MSN Life 
Events. http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=married