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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Verbs, text-segmenting and clause-types

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verbs, text-segmenting and clause-types
  • Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 18:01:04 +0100

On 13/08/2005 07:26, Rolf Furuli wrote:

...

And here is the important point: No study of Ugaritic of Akkadian verbs has
systematically distinguished between past tense and past reference!


There is a good reason for this, Rolf, and also why no study of biblical Hebrew other than yours has done so: it is impossible in principle to make such distinctions (even assuming that they are theoretically valid distinctions) with a limited corpus in a dead language.

... Moreover,
the apocopation which is seen in many WAYYIQTOLs relates to the last root
consonant and not to a final U. This means that if a short preterit was the
antecedent of Hebrew WAYYIQTOL, either Ugaritic YAQTUL or Akkadian
IPRUS could have been such an antecedent. Both forms hardly could be such an
antecedent, because their shortness is different.


The phonological argument is that Hebrew lost all word final short vowels and so final -U of YAQTULU; but when the root ended in yod or vav (i.e. a lamed-he verb) the -U of the YAQTULU form merged with the final part of the root to form a long vowel, which was not lost. A distinction was also preserved in the Hiphil because the final -U affected the final vowel sound within the root. Thus full (non-apocopated) YIQTOL derives from YAQTULU, and apocopated YIQTOL from YAQTUL, in a phonologically coherent way.

The connection with IPARRAS is indeed less clear. But east Semitic is in general far more remote from Hebrew than are Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic and Arabic, all of which have a short form like YAQTUL distinct from a longer form with a final -U and/or -N.

...

Arabic resembles Ugaritic as far as the indicative/jussive distinctions are
concerned. In Arabic we find the following forms: indicative YAQTULU,
subjunctive: YAQTULA, jussive: YAQTUL, and energic: YAQTULAN(NA). So, the
Ugaritic opposition YAQTUL/YAQTULU is seen in Arabic in the opposition
between indicative and jussive. In Phoenician and Biblical Aramaic
indicative has final N while jussive does not have this N. Thus, the
indicative/jussive difference in these languages is between long and short
forms as well.


Exactly as in Hebrew: the long form, derived from YAQTULU, is indicative, and the short form, derived from YAQTUL, is jussive.

It seems clear from the morphology that Hebrew WAYYIQTOL is derived from some prefix plus the short YIQTOL (remembering that only a very small proportion of WAYYIQTOLs are not apocopated where they could be). And this prefix is not simply the vav conjunction, because of the patah and especially the dagesh in the yod (or tav or nun). It seems to be a semantic innovation in Hebrew that this combination is used as an indicative mostly with past reference. But the basic verb form is not an innovation, but rather a product of the application of regular phonological changes to the common NW Semitic YAQTUL form.

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



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