Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> > > > Would anyone explain me, what's wrong with the most simple and
evident
> > > > explanation:
> > > >
> > > > waw usually serves as tense reversal device, but
> > > > sometimes it is simply a consequtive?
> > > >

> "Nonsense" by whose interpretation?  Yours?  Why should I (or anyone else)
> accept your interpretations when they tend to be so far divergent from
what
> most everybody else sees?  And I have no idea what you mean by "acts as
> conjugation," but it has been shown time and time again that the Hebrew
verb
> system doesn't code tense at all.  I don't have time to go in circles the
way
> some of these threads are doing, so I refer you to the literature.

Sorry, not conjugation, of course; conjunction. Wherever I take Tanakh, and
see the verb prefix waw, I treat it either as tense reversal, or conjunction
"and." Thus, waiomer could be either, he said, or "and he will say." Never,
not a single time I had semantical problem with either of these readings.

A question is, why conjunction waw or shuruk became wa-? I think, this is
because "and+verb" structure normally appears in the beginning of phrase,
where syntactical accent is strong. Similarly forceful pronunciation of
phrase-final words (to make them clear despite downward phrase-end
intonation) also produce conjunction wa-.

This works in all cases. Why invent complex reasons?

Vadim Cherny