Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Friday 17 September 2004 06:33, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> Dear Peter,
>
> I see I did not manage to get my message across. It does not seem that
> you ever have tried to make a scrupulous distinction between semantic
> meaning and conversational pragmatic implicature and understand the
> principles behind this.

I'll leave the personal nature of this statement to Peter...

> I do not say that less than one per cent of the WAYYIQTOLs and other
> verbs argue for my conclusions and more than 99 per cent against.  For
> example, I have a list of exactly 3,550 participles and infinitives
> functioning as finite verbs, signalling past events that were completed
> at speech time.  By the same criteria you use to conclude that the
> WAYYIQTOLs are perfective, all these infinite forms must be perfective
> as well.  But nobody would claim that.  I have a list of 1,027 YIQTOLs
> that would be taken as perfective by the same criteria as well.  There
> are also thousands of WAYYIQTOLs of different kinds that argue against
> their perfectivity.  But all these werbs tell us what the WAYYIQTOLs are
> *not*, but they do not tell what the WAYYIQTOLs *are*.

ISTM that this approach is just a tad backward: we assume that we know which 
one signal what kind of time, whether events were "completed" (whatever that 
may mean in a given context), whether the participles are "functioning as 
finite verbs" etc. and you claim to have done this with every single verb in 
the HB.  If we already know all this about them, why go to so much trouble?  
I understand that the purpose of linguistic research in BH is to try and sort 
out just these kinds of things, about all the verbs yes, but especially about 
the vague ones that we're not sure of.  If somebody already has it all nailed 
down, I guess we can all move on to another language, no?

> And here are my "less than one percent of the verbs" pertinent.  In
> order to show the real nature of a conjugation, we need a verb occurring
> in a context where we can be certain that its imperfective
> characteristics are caused by its conjugation alone, and not by other
> linguistic factor alone, or by the interplay of such factors.  Examples
> meeting such strict criteria are few indeed -- less than one percent.
>
> I have lectured about my verbal model for groups of scholars, and I do
> not expect that the model immediately should be accepted, or necessarily
> accepted at all.  But frankly speaking, I am surprised to find how
> difficult it is to be able to have a meaningful discussion regarding
> the  linguistic principles at stake.  It seems to me that very few
> professors of Semitic languages are able to fathom that there is a
> distinction between semantic ( uncancellable) factors inside a language
> and pragmatic factors.  This seems to be something they never have
> thought of.  So it is high time that linguistics are introduced into
> Semitic studies.

To a large degree it depends, quite frankly, on how old they are.  A lot were 
taught the old style of linguistics and can't break free of it.  And most of 
these "newer" models have been around less than 40 years.  Don't expect that 
your model will be accepted overnight, especially considering some of the 
problems with it that have surfaced here over the years (no, I won't 
enumerate them - see the archives).  At the same time, many of us who have 
reached middle age have been able to break free of the old methods and look 
at newer ones.  Still, "newer" does not equal "better" and so any of us who 
want to embrace one of the newer models must demonstrate, with a heavy 
preponderance of evidence, why the one we like is not only better than the 
old one, but also better than the other recent ones.

And I have yet to see a real demonstration to back up the assumption that 
"there is a distinction between semantic (uncancellable) factors inside 
[Hebrew] and pragmatic factors."  The interaction between the two, as well as 
the dividing line between them, seems to get more hazy with every bit of 
research that is done.  Thus, perhaps it's no wonder that some just throw up 
their hands and return to the old model.  They haven't seen anything better 
yet.  I don't know, but I do know that change happens much more slowly in 
biblical studies than in most other disciplines.

I see a whole passel of assumptions in the paragraph below:
> BTW,  the verb MWT was not viewed as punctiliar in the Hebrew mind.

Assumption 1.

> Because punctiliarity is not semantic meaning but conversational
> pragmatic implicature,  

Assumption 2.

> I am not aware of a single method by the help of 
> which you can point to a verb and say, "this Hebrew verb is
> punctiliar".  

Assumption 3.  There are plenty, though not all of them specifically refer to 
Hebrew.  I mentioned several in my 1994 paper.

> Hebrew verbs can be marked for durativity, dynamicity 
> (change), and telicity, 

Assumption 4.

> properties that are taken as semantic meaning, 
> but I have never seen proofs that the same is true for punctiliarity.

Assumption 5.  How many "proofs" would it take to convince you?

It's not enough just to say these things about Hebrew verbs, there has to be 
SOME demonstration.  To say "well, it's in my dissertation so you can't 
access it right now, so just take my word for it" won't cut the mustard.  
Sorry.  And since much of what you say about the verbal system is apparently 
based on the assmputions above (among other assumptions), you're going to 
have to demonstrate the validity of these assumptions before the model 
developed thereupon will be able to stand up to scholarly scrutiny.

> Peter Kirk wrote:
> > On 17/09/2004 09:01, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> >> Dear Peter,
> >>
> >> I understand that your position is caused by your inductive approach
> >> to Hebrew verbs.  My different conclusion is caused by the approach
> >> of distinguishing between semantic meaning and conversational
> >> pragmatic implicature.  Less than one percent of all Hebrew verbs can
> >> be used to identify semantic meaning.  In my view a quality approach
> >> (semantics) is much better than a quantity approach (pragmatics).
> >
> > OK. But if you develop a model based on your 1% of verbs which is then
> > contradicted by a large part of the 99%, surely there is something
> > wrong with the model. I would accept that in 1% of WAYYIQTOLs the
> > internal structure may be visible. But in 99%, or at least 90%, there
> > is no indication of any kind of interest in the internal structure.
> > But according to your model the aspect is semantic and so
> > uncancellable. So you end up with the reductio ad absurdum that in a
> > narrative passage with WAYYIQTOLs like Jonah 1:3 (chosen largely at
> > random) there is forced to be an interest in the internal structure of
> > no less than five successive events, some of which are more or less
> > punctiliar; whereas you are left with no way which is actually used
> > for the author to narrate a series of actions whose internal structure
> > is not made visible.
> >
> > How do you deal with WAYYIQTOL forms of verbs which are strictly
> > punctiliar, like the rather common WAYYAMOT "and he died"? How can
> > these be imperfective?
>
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-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"No good.  Hit on head."   -Gronk