Biblical Hebrew Forum

[kgraham0938 AT comcast.net]

@ Herman
You wrote:
Herman:dear kelton, Steve, others interested,
In Biblical Hebrew, there is no visible nominative, genitive, dative,
 accusative, ablative or any other kind of case ending for which we usLatin 
words, because they are Latin/Greek, i.e. Indo-European terms.
 Let alone a "datival accusative". Imagine we would suppose there were
 indeed case endings someday in Hebrew (which is likely), like in Arabic 
there still are in poetry for example, then we could easily prove that in the 
biblical phase of Hebrew they died out.
Response: Well actually, the accusative is visible in Hebrew. )T is 
definitely the sign for the direct object.  A dative accusative is just a 
label for when we find a pronominal object where we would expect a 
prepositional object.  You go on to say
Herman:We have for example words like לילה láyla 
"night" with penultimate
stress, which is in fact ליל layl/leyl, with what we could 
term a
 "locative" case ending suffixed. The same thing we see in 
הביתה
 habbáyta "home". לילה layla has a fossilised/ossified
 ((?)PS what word would we use in English? It's not my native language)
"locative" ending, so it had once meant "at night", but because 
לילה
"at night" was apparently used more often in the language than 
ליל
"night" in its normal form, eventually לילה became 
the normal word for
 "night."
 We can thus say that case endings were/are no longer there when most
> > > texts were composed.

Response: The word in english is just as you say it. It means "night".  In 
regards to what you said above, even though there are'nt any markers to 
illustrate case, however from a syntatic standpoint I think we can see nouns 
functioning as nominatives, genitives, and accusatives.
Herman:Why all this? Isn't this all purely academic?
Response: No, I think it is for clarification.  I think it helps because it 
illustrates how words are functioning in a sentence.  In my mind it is good 
to have ways of communicating Hebrew in a familiar way.

Herman:I think not; once we establish, like traditional grammars do, that 
את
 is the particle for the object, which in Greek/Latin is usually given
expression for nouns with the accusative, we tend to move on a little
 too enthusiastically, and end up with a particle that expresses
 "accusative", which is nonsense for Hebrew. As a result, we mix up
 source language and Hebrew too, when we translate, because often our
 languages are described by means of the same traditional Greek/latin
 grammars.

Response: But if that is what we are familiar with, then I see no problem 
with describing Hebrew under those titles if that is how the syntax of a 
sentence operates.  It helps clarify how the words are functioning under 
titles that we are familiar with.
Herman:Like Steve asked, if you translate אתי "to me", 
don't you turn a
Hebrew direct object into an English indirect object? (of course, he
 didn't use Latin case names ;) ) Well, that is exactly where the two
languages have little or nothing to do with each other: an ancient Israelite 
wouldn't have an idea what we are talking about: to him, the
 את [et] in אתי [oti] is simply a preposition, 
like על [(al] or other
prepositions. There are examples where it seems not to matter whether
 or not את [et] is used in case of a definite noun that has the
 function of object. But in case of 
ויוזעק אתי wayyaz(eq 
)oti here,
 the only alternative is a suffix: 
ויזעק� י wayyaz(aqeni (or something
 like that). Here it is את [et], a preposition, not strictly 
speaking a
direct object, which most likely would have been with a suffix (if we
 would want to define it all in these terms).
 What we should do, we have to look at the actual way the
 particles/prepositions work in the Hebrew language, without importing
these foreign categories. The word את first of all seems so have a
 complicated way of suffix attachment; we have both 
אותי oti and אתי
 itti (etc.), which seems to be the same word את. In the case of 
אתי
 itti the usual meaning is "with me", whereas אותי 
oti is commony
 understand as "me (object)". Can we then say that 
אותי "must" always
expresses an object "me"?
Response: Well that's just it, the verb Z'Q means to "cry out."  Normally it 
takes the preposition 'EL following it when it is addressing someone.  But 
this time it is followed by )T.  If you take )T as a preposition "with" I 
don't think it would make much sense.  So it is best to leave it 
untranslated, take the pronoun as a DDO.  Since 'T normally functions as a 
DDO I think that is your best option.
Herman: That might be what we had our grammar books teach us. However, these 
books are based on the very MT we use and were we find this example of 
אתי oti that doesn't fit our grammars exactly.
 Now we can do two things; we can adapt our MT to our grammars and find
 all sorts of complex explanations using "datival accusatives" and
 things like that; or we can adapt our grammars to our MT, saying,
apparently the grammars have missed this example where את [et] 
(אתי
 oti) introduces the addressed person as a complement to the verb 
הזעיק
 hiz(iq.I prefer the latter alternative.

Response:  Well that would make sense, but I have never seen anyone propose 
that idea before.  But there are other instances of this type of situation, 
so I would not argue that the grammars missed this example, just labeled it 
in a mannar that could be understood.
--
Kelton Graham 
KGRAHAM0938 AT comcast.net
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Alter's translation (Was: Daniel 6:27 (time
        indefinite) II)
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Peter wrote:-

>The trouble with Alter's attempt to fill this lack, from what I remember
>from a brief look some time ago, is that the English in it is so
>unnatural that it must also be rejected as "bad English".

Alter's translation and commentary has won much critical acclaim from
scholars. You ought to acknowledge that your view of what consistutes a
good translation is a very narrow one and not shared by many.  I'm
gradually chugging my way through it. I think anyone who can read a
newspaper should have no problems reading it. It has its quirks, but
I think its a welcome addition to the range of English translations
available.

If list members haven't seen it, it is a translation and commentary of the
five books of Moses. The comments are not as extensive as you would get
with something like the Anchor Bible series. The work is formatted to try
to keep the comment on the same page as the text in question. On most
pages the comments take more space than the text. The comments are written
in very good English not Alter's slightly quirky translation style. There
is an extended essay on translation at the front which is well worth
reading. Taking everything together, as they clearly should be, it is a
work which every serious student of the Bible ought to consider adding to
their resources.

Bill Rea, IT Services, University of Canterbury \_
E-Mail bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz               </   New
Phone 64-3-364-2331, Fax  64-3-364-2332       /)  Zealand
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