Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear David,

Just a few concluding remarks:

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Kummerow" <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 11:27 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew grammar, (was Zech 6:8)


> Hi Rolf,
>
> Thanks, too, for the discussion. I still have trouble understanding your
> view. Do you have a website where you make your dissertation available
> for pdf download? Or an ftp server where you might be able to upload it
> for a time? Or email it to me? I would like to read your whole, indepth
> discussion rather than just emails. Anyway, a few more questions and
> clarifications below (this thread is drawing to a close).
snip

> Regarding the infinitive absolute used as a narrative verb, if this is
> the case then I agree that it would not express tense or aspect.
> However, if over time it remained consistently used in this way, even
> becoming to be restricted to this use, my feeling is that it would
> acquire a tense due to its consistent, restricted use. That's what
> happened with the participle in Hebrew: no one would have at first
> admitted that it was a present tense, but over time due to its
> consistent use it did (you may dispute this, I guess). But that's not
> what you say regarding wayyiqtol, even though your hypothesis is that
> due to its consistent use it aquired a different stress etc from weyiqtol.

RF:
Grammaticalization processes are common in all languages, and I myself use
the example with the participle in Rabbinic Hebrew to illustrate it. The
very high percentage
of WAYYIQTOLs with past reference (93,1 % of 15,536 verbs according to my
analysis) could suggest such a grammaticalization process. However, there
are several strong reasons to reject this. It is believed that scribes
choosing the WAYYIQTOL form would generally choose the short form of the
verb.  But the fact is that 73 % of all WAYYIQTOLs are long. If quantity
were the criterion, we had to conclude that the long form was generally
used.  But the fact is that most of the mentioned 73 % simply cannot be
short, so they tell us nothing about which form is choosen; quality is a
better criterion than quantity.
I have already argued that narrative verbs *must* have past reference, so
again, the high
percentage is not necessarily the right basis for a conclusion.

Grammaticalization is a unidirectional process, and if such a process has
occurred in connection with WAYYIQTOL, we would expect to find diachronic
evidence of more and more specialization in the direction of past reference,
but that is not the case. Moreover, in many cases it is possible to show
that WAYYIQTOL has imperfective characteristics, and in other instances it
can be demonstrated that YIQTOL  and WAYYIQTOL are semantically similar.  On
this basis we can view all prefix forms as one group. And the 13,539
WAYYIQTOLs, 1,027 YIQTOLs, and 50 WEYIQTOLs with past reference constitute
only 49.8 % of all prefix forms.

snip
> > But why, then, are imperfective verbs in the thousands used in Hebrew
> > narratives contrary to what is normal in other languages?  I define
> > (this is
> > a broad definition) the imperfective aspect as a close-up view of a small
> > part of an event with details visible. This means that when the
> > imperfective
> > aspect is used there are three big options (and several smaller ones)
> > available regarding what is focussed upon:
> >
> > 1) The beginning and a small part of the action.
> > 2) Progressive action after the beginning and before the end.
> > 3) The end and  a resultant state.
> >
> > In contrast with the perfective aspect, the imperfective one cannot make
> > visible both beginning and end. It is also worth noting that the
> > imperfective aspect is open-ended even when the end of the event is
> > included
> > in its focus, because the end of the resultant state is not seen.
>
> OK, this is where I really have trouble comprehending, esp. option 3).
> How might you understand Ruth 1:3, for example - wayyamot - in the light
> of your theory? Option 1) doesn't really work - "he began to die".
> Option 2 doesn't really work - "continued to die". And option 3 doesn't
> really work as the verb doesn't express the end of a predication but the
> whole perfective event of the death.

Persons with Indo-European minds often have problems in connection with
resultative and factitive situations in Hebrew (situations where the agent
leads the patient through the end of an action and into a resultant state,
or directly into such a state) , because this concept is little used in
English and other modern languages..  A good example is the Hebrew  BRK
versus the English verb "bless". Of this Hebrew verb, 71,2 % of the
occurrences are Piel, which often is resultative/factitive, and the other
occurrences conforms with this. I would argue that in Hebrew thought the
stress is on the condition of approval, grace, holiness and not on the
action
itself.

Resultative and factitive situations can be expressed by diathesis (the
stems, particularly the Piel stem) or by the imperfective aspect. I have
systematically studied this in
differnt Semitic languages, and I am in line with the excellent exposition
of Piel by Waltke/O´Connor.  Joshua 7:6 NIV says, "Joshua...
fell facedown before the ark of the LORD, remaining there till evening.". In
Hebrew there is just one verb, but in English there are two. The reason is
that NPL is viewed as a punctiliar verb, and we cannot fathom a punctiliar
event lasting until the evening.  Lexicons try to solve the problem by
saying that NPL both means "to fall" and "to lie prostrate," but evidence is
lacking. I have analyzed  all the occurrences of this verb and there is
absolute no evidence for a stative lexical meaning. What the authors fail to
see is that the notion "to lie prostrate for a time" is not caused by
lexicon but
by grammar, namely, by the imperfective verb (again, semantics versus
pragmatics).
So I would argue that the WAYYIQTOL in this verse is resultative. The action
ended when the earth was
reached (note the he locale), and the resultant state continued until the
evening.
There are many similar events where we need two verbs in English.

I would argue in a similar way in connection with Ruth 1:3. I once
translated the Ethiopic Enoch into Norwegian, and in connection with that I
made a thorough study of the Hebrew and Ge´ez parallels NP$-NAFS,
RWX-MANFAS, $)WL-SIOL, and GY) HNM (GEHENNA)-TAHTIT. The conclusion was
that the views of the writers of Enoch and the Tanakh are diametrically
opposite: the Enoch writers believing in an intrinsic human immortality and
conscious life after death, while the writer of the Tanakh viewed death as
no life
in any form (the same state as an animal, Eccl 3:19)..

However, if we consider the importance for a Hebrew of old to be buried in
particular graves, and if we look at the words that are used in connection
with many deaths in Israel,
such as "being gathered to their forefathers" and "coming to the dead," I at
least, get a strong impression that death was not viewed as "the land on no
return," as did the Babylonians. Suggestions in the Tanakh corroborates this
(e.g. Is 26:19; Job 14:13,14; Hos 13:14, and Dan 12:13). Looking at the
situation from the point of view of persons living in the first century
C:E., Jesus compares death with sleep (John 11:11-13), Martha was already
familiar
with the view of a resurrection on the last day (John 11:24), and Jesus
finds hints at a resurrection in Ex 3:6 (Luke 20:37, 38). My point with
these
passages is to show that the state of being dead was of paramount
importance for those who wrote the Tanakh, and this corroborates my
grammatical argument that the WAYYIQTOL of Ruth 1:3 is resultative.

I will add that of the 1,027 YIQTOLs with past reference, there are 303 that
are telic and 104 that are semelfactive. Particularly the last group
is interesting, since the members parallel Ruth 1:3; the difference being
that they are YIQTOLs, yet they portray events that we view as instantaneous
without expressing the so-called "durative past" or iterativity.

snip
> Regards,
> David Kummerow.
> _______________________________________________


Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo