Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Vadim Cherny <vadimcherny AT mail.ru>]

> Also, I'm not sure I understand >>At any rate, waw is the oldest device for
> creating future tense.>> Which "future tense" was created by a vav before
> any verbal form?

I mean that waw reversed past tense, likely the oldest verb form, into the 
future tense. Later, because of the confusion between waw-reversing and 
waw-conjunctive (wecatav. and he said vs. he will say), future tense became 
constructed in the modern form, from imperative, ctov - ichtov instead of 
wecatav.

> The "stressed vav" - as opposed to simple vav preceding the prefix
> conjucation which often marks what Jouun/Muraoka refer to as the indirect
> volitive - with doubling is what marks the wayyitqtol. Simply prefixing a
> vav would not demand any concommitant phonetic necessity. 

Well, I wouldn't be sure about that. In Russian, similar conjunctive 
prefix-preposition is certainly semi-stressed. Perhaps, semi-stress in 
waw-conjunctive is weaker than in waw-reversing, but it is likely present. 
True, waw-conjunctive is unstressed in nouns, but intonation is different in 
verbs.

> Changes in
> stress are certainly valid grammatical markers, e.g. English CONvict noun
> vs conVICT verb. But, without some consonantal marker, such as a vav or
> doubling, the change of stress would not be of much use in an unvoweled
> text. N'est pas? Or am I missing your point?

Now, I'm not sure I understood your point  :-)
Certainly, stress did not show in unvowelized text. It could be reconstructed 
from vowels, though, quite unambiguously (Ashkenazim had to change the vowels 
because they moved the stress).
I invoked stress only to explain Masoretic doubling after waw. Masoretes 
heard the semi-stress, and consequently heard the doubling.

Vadim Cherny