Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 10/08/2005 19:11, Vadim Cherny wrote:

> ...
>
> > In connection with the classical Hebrew verbs, a very important question
> >    
> to study in order to find any bias is the syntactic role of the conjunction
> WAW.  Can the functions and nature of WAW  alone explain the WAY- of
> WAYYIQTOL or the WE- of WEQATAL.
>
> Yes, they can! Yiqtol's prefixes already have schwa, and adding waw with
> another schwa, according to the standard rule of two schwas at the
> word-beginning, makes the first schwa hirek or, in this case, patah! Rolf,
> you are inventing the problems out of thin air.
>
>  
No, Vadim. YIQTOL's prefixes do not have sheva, they mostly have hiriq. 
And vav with sheva can be prefixed, indeed it prefixed in the WEYIQTOL 
form. But there is a distinct form WAYYIQTOL which has a patah, and a 
dagesh added to the initial consonant of the YIQTOL. There are two 
distinct forms which are both always clause initial, and it is 
impossible that the difference between them is caused by the 
phonological environment. In principle the distinction could be free 
variation, but it is usually safe to assume that two distinct forms like 
this must reflect an underlying semantic distinction.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/