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  • From: Evgeny Ivanov <evi7538 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The mystery of vav-consequtive
  • Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 09:41:38 -0700 (PDT)

Dear friends,

I was thinking recently about the mystery of vav-consequtive. My
understandning is that the first imperfect verb brings the reference point in
time to the event of that first action, and then all consequtive verbs would
be in the future as seen from that reference point in time. This is a
different sense of time compared to modern languages.

Traditionally the imperfect verbs in vav-consequtive form are translated as
perfect. However, if the above understanding of vav-consequtive is correct,
the actual time of their action with respect to the present moment is
unknow. It is unknown whether the action has been finished by now, or it is
still going to be finished. The only thing known for sure is that the action
was not finished at the moment of the first action in the vav-consequtive
sentence. So the form of the verbs (and time of actions) in vav-consequtive
form would rather be determined by exegesis and context.

For example, in Genesis 2.1-2.3 the actions are translated in perfect form:
"And the heaven and earth were finished". However, literal translation would
rather be that they are not finished at the time when the action of the first
verb in the vav-chain happened (which is probably Gen1.1), but it's unknown
whether they are finished by the present moment or not.

Would you agree with this understandidng of vav-consequtive phenomenon?


Shalom,
Evgeny





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>From joel AT exc.com Wed Apr 27 12:46:26 2005
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Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 12:40:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Dr. Joel M. Hoffman" <joel AT exc.com>
Subject: Re: Hebrew spelling [was: Re: [b-hebrew] karu or ka'ari (Ps 22:16) ?]
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>wouldn't be before that time. So I ask- when was Hebrew spelling
>"normailzed"? And bibliography would be helpful (so I can check up to
>see if you are telling the truth). ;-)

Interestingly, Hebrew spelling *still* is not fully normalized:

1. The Academy publishes official spelling rules for _matres
lectiones_, but these are widely disregarded (even by people who
can understand them).

2. So great is the disparity between the official spelling and the
popular spelling that even common words such as MIXTAV ("letter")
are spelled one way in Israeli dictionaries and another way in
best-selling Israeli novels.

3. The result is that common words frequently enjoy a variety of
spellings. Educated Israelis, for example, will regularly
disagree about how many yud's and vav's to put into a word. The
"official" spelling often looks so bad that Israelis refuse to use
it (which is why Israeli novels and newspapers do not always
follow the official spellings).

4. The problem is not limited to yud and vav. For example, the
Hebrew word for "discipline" (as in subject matter, not
MIShMA'AT), is a cognate with the English, but people disagree
about how to spell it. Some people prefer DITzIPLINAH (Tz=Tzadi);
some prefer DISTzIPLINAH, with a Samech. But the official
spelling is DISKIPLINAH, which sounds ridiculous.

As for classical Hebrew, we frequently find the same word spelled
differently even within a sentence. And the "official" text of the OT
is still subject to minor variations. The widely-used Mandelkern
concordance, for example, lists some spellings that disagree with the
BHS text.

As for a bibliography, the spelling of Hebrew throughout history is
one a handful of running themes of my latest book (_In the Beginning:
A Short History of the Hebrew Language_, NYU Press), but I don't
suppose that citing myself will go too far in convincing you that I'm
telling the truth....

You might look at Even Shoshan's dictionary (in Hebrew) and Milon
Sapir (also in Hebrew). The former contains the official Israeli
spelling guidelines; comparing the two highlights some of the
spellings disagreements.

-Joel




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