Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear David,

See my comments below.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Kummerow" <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2005 10:47 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew grammar, (was Zech 6:8)


> Hi Rolf,
>
> I've just gotten home and in checking my email I see much more has been
> written. I hope to write more in the morning, but before I head off to
> bed again (the reality of being a human!), just a quick question
> regarding your response to Herman.
>
> > RF:
> > The Masoretes would not dream of inventing anything new. They were
> > extremely
> > careful to point and vocalize the text exactly as they heard it recited 
> > in
> > the synagogue. However, the recitation of a narrative text would
> > probably be
> > different from the recitation of a hortatory or future text. My 
> > suggestion
> > is that verbs in a narrative text were recited with retracted stress,
> > causing a closed syllable with patah and gemination (the WAY- prefix),
> > while
> > this was not the case with hortatory and future texts (which got the
> > WE-prefix). Since patah and shewa were pronounced similarly, this was for
> > the Masoretes simply a matter of stress and intonation and not a semantic
> > distinction. But later grammarians misunderstood this, and ascribed a
> > semantic
> > distinction to the difference between WE- and WAY-, and the consecutive
> > model was born.
>
> I am wondering what your evidence for pathah being pronounced similarly
> to shewa is? I thought that that shewa only approached such a
> pronunciation when it received the ga'ya accent. I could be wrong, but
> then I am also convinced that the grammaticalisation of Hebrew by the
> stage of the Masoretes meant that a seven vowel system was in place.
> This has bearing on the pronunciation of shewa and syllable structure.

RF: G.Kahn (2000) "The Early Karaite Tradition of hebrew Grammatical 
Thought" p. 31 says: "Various passages in the Diqduq reflect the fact that 
vocalic shewa was pronounced with the same quality as patah." See also K. 
Lewy (1936) "Zur Masoretischen Grammatik" and T. Harviainen (1977) "On the 
vocalization of closed unstressed syllables in Hebrew." Studia Orientalia, 
48, 1.
> Everyone else seems to argue the other way round to you: everyone else
> seems to argue for two forms with different semantics, the reason for
> which they are used in different text-types; whereas you seem to argue
> for one form being used across the board and then only secondarily
> becoming differentiated.

Some scholars have viewed WAYYIQTOL as semantically identical with YIQTOL, 
but they are few. There are two basic problems for scholars of Hebrew:

1) That classical Hebrew has four different conjugations is a model or 
paradigm. Students are immersed into it and take it for granted. The 
possibility that this can be wrong is not even considered. When the students 
become professors, they entertain the same views.

2) Very few Hebrew scholars have a linguistic background which can help them 
look at the Hebrew grammar with new linguistic eyes.

As I have already said, there is no distinction between WAYYIQTOL/WEYIQTOL 
and QATAL/WEQATAL  before the Masoretes. My study of practically all finite 
and infinite verbs in classical Hebrew has revealed, at least to me, that 
all prefix-forms can be viewed as one semantic unit, and the same is true 
with the suffix-forms. The functional distinctions can be easily explained 
on the basis of fundamental linguistic concepts.
> What do you make of the differences in the hiphil?

RF:
I view apocopation basically as a non-semantic phonetic phenomenon. 
Interestingly, apocopation is related to grammatical person, and this 
suggests its non-semantic nature.  Regarding WAYYIQTOL I found that 98.7% of 
3.p. s. m. were apocopated, but only 33,1% of 1. p. s., and 25,0% of 3. p. 
pl. m.
> What do you make of word order and mood, that is, do you agree with
> Holmstedt, Niccacci, Cook, etc that modal word order is prefix verb
> first and indicative word order is prefix verb second?

RF:
Generally, yes, but there are so many exceptions that the rule simply breaks 
down.  When I see a clause-initial YIQTOL, my first question is whether it 
is modal. When I see a clause-initial QATAL, my first question is whether 
this is direct speech. But in both cases the context has the final say.

Do you agree that
> the more fixed word order in this regard is due to the two forms (ie
> jussive and indicative verbs) have become the same (except for some
> verbs in hiphil) due to grammaticalisation?

Not at all! I agree with Cook in his criticism of discourse analysis as a 
tool to pinpoint semantic meaning. (But Niccacci has made several 
interesting observations; I refer to seven of his writings in my 
dissertation.) I see no grammaticalization process in connection with short 
and long forms in Hebrew. We have exactly the same situation in Akkadian, 
Aramaic and Ugaritic.  Both long and short prefix forms can be used to 
express modal and indicative forms.
> Regards,
> David Kummerow.


Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo