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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] The perspective of this native speaker of Modern Hebrew of Biblical Hebrew tenses

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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The perspective of this native speaker of Modern Hebrew of Biblical Hebrew tenses
  • Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 10:07:02 +0100

Dear Naama,

I agree with most of the observations you make in your post. Yet, a few need some comment.

Naama Zahavi-Ely wrote:

No, the usage of the verb forms in Biblical Hebrew is not identical with that of Modern Hebrew (or Mishnaic Hebrew for that matter). In Modern Hebrew Yiqtol is future, Qatal is past, and participle is present tense (more or less). Mishnaic Hebrew is largely the same. It clearly isn't so in Biblical Hebrew.

Agree

And no, the perfective/imperfective distinction doesn't work either. It works about half the time -- which is what you would expect of a coincidence. My impression is that European scholars, used to Indo-European languages with their complex encoding of time/sequencing/modes by verb forms, are and have always been baffled by the Hebrew verb forms which don't seem to work in the same way, and try to impose some non-existent rules by any means possible. It just doesn't work.

snip

It is true that Indo-European scholars have imposed upon classical Hebrew their definitions of aspect, but it is my impression that most modern Israeli scholars have done exactly the same, not with aspect, which they reject, but with tense. When you say that the perfective/imperfective distinction work about half the time, you are correct. But note that this is when you apply English aspectual distinctions to classical Hebrew. And this is a cardinal error in Hebrew studies, to assume that aspect is one and the same thing in all aspectual languages, namely, the opposition incomplete/completed or incomplete/complete! I am not aware of a singly scholarly study that presents a different view.

It is rather easy to stear clear of the mentioned casdinal error, namely by using the fundamental concepts "deictic center (C)," "event time (ET)," and "reference time (RT)" to define tense and aspect. Tense can be defined as the relationship between C and RT. When RT comes before C, the tense is past, when it comes after C, the tense is future, and when it coincides with C, the reference is present. Applying this to classical Hebrew, we do not find any group of verb with a uniform relationship between RT/ET and C, not even WAYYIQTOL (see below). Thus, tense is not grammaticalized in classical Hebrew.

Aspect can be defined as the relationship between ET and RT. Given that the perfective aspect in English is expressed by perfect and the imperfective aspect by present participle, there are just two options in English for the relationsship between ET and RT. When the perfective aspect is used RT intersects ET and the coda (end), and when the imperfective aspect is used RT intersects ET at the nucleus (the two aspects can be combines though, as in "Ann has been reading the book".) On this basis the distinction incomplete/completed (or, as some prefer: incomplete/complete) is made. If we look at classical Hebrew, there are many more options for the intersection of ET by RT. Thus, the classical Hebrew aspects are very different from their English counterparts, and must be defined differently. I have studied this matter thoroughly, and the new definition of Hebrew aspects that has emerged from this study accounts for the use of *ALL* the verbs in the Tanakh!

Vav conversive + yiqtol form ("imperfect") is a past event in Biblical Hebrew, pretty much always (at any case, I can't think of exceptions). The very same action, though, can be encoded in the qatal form ("perfect") if the author chooses to put the subject first, before the verb. And the reason for that choice can be any number of things: it can be a focus on the subject rather than the verb, it can be in order to mention an action which is not a part of the same series of actions (which may or may not be the equivalent of a perfect verb in English in a particular context), it can simply be a signal for the end of a series of actions (as in the last verb in Genesis 1:5a, which ends a list of actions of God that starts at 1:4).

snip

I agree with your comments regarding the use of WAYYIQTOL and QATAL in past contexts, with one exception. There are several examples of WAYYIQTOL with non-past reference (at least 998). And here I would like to point out the second cardinal error in the study of classical Hebrew, namely the almost total reliance on quantity rather than quality. Let me illustrate the point: The difference between long and short WAYYIQTOLs is being viewed as very important, because it is believed that WAYYIQTOL goes back to a short preterit YAQTUL. However, 73 per cent of the WAYYIQTOLs are long. If quantity were our criterion, we could reason that because 10,611 WAYYIQTOLs are long, the form IS long. However, realizing that these forms cannot be short because of their laryngeals, suffixes and other factors, the smaller group is the important one. Because the members of this smaller group need not be long, a quality study of them could reveal whether their shortness is a matter of etymology or phonology or other factors. The same is true with the temporal reference of the WAYYIQTOLs, where 93.1 per cent have past reference. However, almost all these occur in narrative contexts where the verb by definition must have past reference, so these WAYYIQTOLs simply cannot have anything but past reference. Thus, the least likely place to find the true nature of WAYYIQTOLs is in narrative texts. What we ought to do is to make a quality study of the 998 WAYYIQTOLs with non-past reference.

Having done this quality study, together with an analysis of all the 89,574 finite verbs of the Tanakh, the DSS, Ben Sira, and the Inscriptions, my conclusion is that tense is absent from classical Hebrew, and that all finite verbs represent either the imperfective or the perfective aspect (though defined differently from the English aspects): YIQTOL, WAYYIQTOL, and WEYIQTOL represent the imperfective aspect, and QATAL and WEQATAL represent the perfective one.

(I have expressed this several times on the list, but I mention it once more, because this discussion of Hebrew verbs comes up again.)

Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo







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