Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Hi Herman,

Note, though, that Hatav's article contains errors and other doubtful 
assertions (again, in my opinion, as in all things different people will 
take different theoretical stances). Eg:

1. Pg 493,n.6 she builds her case on a corpus of Gen-2 Kings (which is 
fine, we all must impose limits on our study), but then attributes this 
to "the First Temple period" so that she might assume her synchronic 
study. This is doubtful in the light of recent research, particuarly the 
JSOTSS book edited by Ian Young.

2. Page 494, section 2, par 1 (also repeated on pg 497). Her assertion 
that the yiqtol in wayyiqtol is the same, synchronically, as yiqtol - 
even if diachronically unrelated - is simply not true. This, I think, is 
her biggest error, and leads her on to propose what she does about the 
clitic -ay- in that it is the verbal complement of the definite article 
(Testen also argues for this in his monograph (but differently) which is 
surprisingly unreferenced by Hatav). All this is built on the 
presumption that the yiqtol in wayyiqtol corresponds to yiqtol and thus 
needs the marker of definiteness to allow it to function in predications 
which are past perfective etc. Such a view which flies in the face of 
the diachronic evidence needs to be carefully explained diachronically 
(and, even more helpfully, typologically) in that a) how the two 
diachronically divergent forms came to be related in the one they have; 
and b) how the divergent diachronic semantics came to be resolved in the 
preference for (long) yiqtol (a question related to a). These are 
questions unanswered by Hatav, but in my view need to be for the view to 
become "the default way of looking at BHebrew grammar" as you predict.

Regards,
David Kummerow.


> Dear list members,
> ! שלום לכם
> I don't know if I said there are no tenses in Hebrew;
> I do largely agree with Galia Hatav (Journal of Linguistics, november 
> 2004).
> For example, C1 gemination in noun and verb anchor the noun or verb to
> "this world" => definite noun or simple past verb (point in time) (I
> guess you can call wayyiqtol a tense, then); whereas yiqtol or non-C1
> geminated noun are yet "undefined". Galia and I came up with that
> theory independently; therefore it must be true. All credits to her of
> course, she really worked it out. Her article is very strongly
> recommended.
> That's all the fresh stuff I can offer.
> Fifty years from now, it'll be the default way of looking at BHebrew 
> grammar. :)
> I think it makes a lot of sense.
> best regards,
> Herman