Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

I didn't get to look at this thread until today, so I am now responding 
to many points in one message.

On 26/11/2005 08:28, Herman Meester wrote:

> ...
>
> Why do I believe in this theory?
> First, it meets a very important criterium in science:
> "The simpler, more elegant, and more surprising theory, that can
> account for *more* phenomena with *less* hypotheses, or only one
> hypothesis, is to be preferred." ...
>  

Herman, I agree with you that this hypothesis is atttractive in many 
ways. But I do have some comments, as below.

> ... The problem that remains when we try to
> explain both wayyiqtol out of *wa-yaqtul as well as wɔyiqtol out of
> *wa-yaqtul(u), ...

(If you are trying to write a (phonetic) schwa here, you should use ə 
(U+0259), rather than ɔ (U+0254, open O). The latter might be the 
appropriate phonetic symbol for short qamats, on some phonetic 
reconstructions of Hebrew, but it is not suitable for Hebrew sheva. 
U+0259 also has the advantage that it is found in recent versions of 
Microsoft core fonts and so is more likely to be readable in e-mail.)

> ...
> If a noun in the definite state is preceded by the prepositions כ ב or
> ל, the noun's geminated C1, preceded by its auxiliary vowel, does not
> need an auxiliary consonant other than כ ב or ל already there. No
> cases of, for example *להקּדש have been found in old phases of Hebrew,
> because no word ה existed. ...
>  

But words of the form והקּדשׂ WHQ.D$, i.e. as above with initial vav 
instead of lamed, do exist, e.g. the first word of Genesis 1:2. Your 
theory requires that vav can be added straight to the geminated 
consonant in WAYYIQTOL verbs. So why doesn't the same happen with 
geminated definite nouns, giving a form וָאָרֶץ WF)FREC rather than the 
attested וְהָאָרֶץ W:HF)FREC? This is certainly a complicating factor for 
the hypothesis, which makes it not quite as simple as you claim.

I see that Joel spotted this issue too, although he did not analyse it 
according to your theory. Your answer to Joel confuses the issue because 
your example using MELEK is untypical, because of the rule that before 
mem the conjunction vav is pronounced as u- rather than ve-. But the 
problem is lessened by Joel's observation that forms like כְּהַיּוֹם 
K.:HAY.OWM are attested, although rare - and the suggestion that if 
forms like וָאָרֶץ WF)FREC had originally occurred they would very probably 
have been reinterpreted at some later stage as something like וְאָרֶץ W:)FREC.

> ...
> Furthermore, in Egyptian Arabic, the geminated C1 remains
> unassimilated to more consonants than is the case in Standard Arabic,
> which may well point to a conserved older practice.
>  

Surely this would suggest the opposite. If Egyptian Arabic has more 
unassimilated consonants (presumably explaining the place name "Sharm 
el-Sheikh" rather than "Sharm esh-Sheikh") and is the conserved older 
practice, that would suggest that the process is assimilation rather 
than dissimilation. There is also the evidence that in written Arabic 
going as far back as the Qur'an at least the article is always written 
as ال i.e. al- or el- with an explicit L, even in cases where the 
classical pronunciation is geminated. While this spelling just could 
have been an incorrect standardisation by someone who believed that the 
variations were caused by partial assimilation rather than partial 
dissimilation, it seems more probable that it represents an actual 
spoken version of the language in which the L was always pronounced. 
There might be evidence for such a pronunciation in ancient 
transliterations. One possible example in the Hebrew Bible is the name 
Eltolad in Joshua 15:30, 19:4, which may have a preserved Arabic article 
complete with L in a context where standard Arabic assimilates, cf. 
Tolad in 1 Chronicles 4:29 which is probably the same place.

All of this suggests to me that the original definite marker was not 
simply gemination, but a prefix morpheme something like al- or hal-, in 
which the final L has become completely assimilated in Hebrew and 
partially assimilated in post-Qur'anic Arabic. But I accept that this 
means some inconsistencies in assimilation rules, which may be 
resolvable by more careful consideration of the full phonetic context 
and history.

In reply to Herman, Rolf wrote:

> The WE- and WAY- of the so-called consecutive forms are the conjunction WAW, 
> and the gemination and patah of the WAY- prefix are caused by phonetic rules 
> and the stress position.

These phonetic rules would suffer from similar problems of inconsistency 
that Herman has noted concerning the Arabic article. There are clear 
cases where the distinction between WEYIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL forms cannot 
be accounted for on the basis of the stress position as heard by the 
Masoretes (which we know from the Masoretic accentuation) or any other 
purely phonological factors. This strongly suggests that there is a real 
morphological distinction, corresponding to a different derivation and 
probably a semantic difference. Herman's theory seems a very promising 
way of explaining this morphological distinction. Also, I agree with 
David K that

> I don't think wayyiqtol and yiqtol are semantically similar at all.
- and if they are not semantically similar (and I don't want to get into 
a new argument with Rolf about that), that strengthens the argument for 
a morphological distinction. I note that the distinction which Rolf does 
not recognise between WEYIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL is phonetically identical 
(and on Herman's theory also morphologically identical) to that between 
indefinite LEQODE$ and definite LAQQODE$, which everyone accepts is a 
real distinction because the non-prefixed forms QODE$ and HAQQODE$ are 
also attested. The problem with WAYYIQTOL is that there is no attested 
form like HAYYIQTOL without the vav prefix. Although come to think of 
it, it might be worth looking at forms traditionally understood as 
interrogative he + YIQTOL to see if they could be reanalysed as HAYYIQTOL.

Rolf also wrote:

> As far as I know, it is 
> unprecedented in any language that a conjunction alone, or in combination 
> with another element prefixed to a verb form causes or signals that this 
> verb form has the very opposite meaning of the same form without the prefix.

But here he is attacking a straw man, for Herman and Hatav are not 
proposing that the underlying verb form is the same, rather they are 
following the admittedly unproven hypothesis that WAYYIQTOL (apocopated 
where possible, with a handful of exceptions) and YIQTOL (not 
apocopated, when not jussive) are based on two different underlying verb 
forms.

Joel wrote:

> YIQTOL for past-tense is not always preceded by VA-, but only VA- forces dagesh in the next letter.  For example, 
> "AZ YASHIR MOSHE," not "AZ YYASHIR...."  It seems to me your theory wrongly predicts that the 
> form ought to be "AZ AYYASHIR," or "AZ HAYYSHIR," or something along those lines.

Surely a YIQTOL in this position is imperfective i.e. marking a 
continuous or repetitive action, and so is semantically distinct from 
WAYYIQTOL. This is quite sufficient to explain the lack of the definite 
marking.

Later, Herman wrote:

> If we would be dealing with some kind of principle that
> wayyiqtol always has the apocopated form, I wouldn't disregard it so
> easily, but wayyiqtol doesn't always have the short yiqtol.
> Apparently, while the distinction between the jussive form and the
> long yiqtol form disappeared, C1 gemination in wayyiqtol was still
> very relevant.

Rolf had written:

> 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.

But with first person jussives there is a tendency to add an extra he 
("cohortative") which tends to cancel out any apocopation in the 1st 
person, and it seems likely that the same phenomenon was found in 
WAYYIQTOL. In the plural apocopation becomes a rather different 
phenomenon because of the suffixed vav. So, in the basic third person 
singular form we find that 98.7% of WAYYIQTOLs which can be apocopated 
are. The remaining 1.3% can include grammatical and textual errors, as 
well as cases where the Masoretes pointed WEYIQTOL as WAYYIQTOL in 
error. And perhaps there was some loss of apocopation in very late texts 
(I think I remember Rolf pointing out some in Daniel). But other than 
this, I think we can hold that there is "some kind of principle that 
wayyiqtol always has the apocopated form", at least in the third person 
singular. There is certainly a high enough correlation to suggest, if 
not prove, that non-jussive YIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL have different origins.

Concerning archaisms, Herman wrote:

> It's an interesting problem. Are there some notorious passages in the
> mentioned corpus where people say it is archaic artificially?

The book of Esther is commonly mentioned in this regard. It is clearly 
post-exilic, but its syntax is closer to the Pentateuch and the 
Deuteronomistic History than to the other clearly post-exilic books 
which are sometimes called "late biblical Hebrew". The potential problem 
for those who date most of the historical books to before the exile is 
resolved if Esther is taken to be written in deliberately archaic style. 
Whereas for those who date the historical books after the Exile, there 
is another issue: if the distinction between standard and "late" 
biblical Hebrew is not diachronic, what is it?

Concerning Phoenician, Rolf wrote:

> Nobody would say that
> this infinitive absolute has some intrinsic completedness of an intrinsic
> past tense. The infinitive absolute simply presents the verbal idea of the
> root without making visible the beginning or end or anything else.

It seems that there are a lot of assumptions here. One is that the verb 
form in question, found in presumably unvowelled inscriptions, is indeed 
an infinitive absolute and not some other form with the same consonants. 
Another is that a verb form which is etymologically an infinitive cannot 
acquire tense or aspect as a result of semantic shifts.

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