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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] WAYYIQTOL/YIQTOL/WEYIQTOL [was Kamatz katan; was: Translating]

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  • From: rochelle altman <willaa AT netvision.net.il>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] WAYYIQTOL/YIQTOL/WEYIQTOL [was Kamatz katan; was: Translating]
  • Date: Sun, 08 Oct 2006 12:16:43 +0200

Dear Rolf,

Thank you for your informative post. I do still have a question and a possible answer to one of yours..

RF:
[snip]
I have compared all the finite verbs in the Samaritan Pentateuch with the
MT, and I found the same as Ben-Hayyim (2000:171):

"In their /the Samaritn/ tradition, as in the second column of OrigenĀ“s
Hexapla, there was no morphological distinction between what we know as waw
consecutive and waw conjunctive. Neither of them caused gemination of the
following consonant in the imperfect."

RISA:
Again, has anyone examined the extant fragments of the Hexapla to determine if the
form of the upsilon is the same in all cases?

Do note that the Greek upsilon originally employed all *FOUR** forms of Phoenician VAV. to denote phonetic values of vocalic U' and ''W'.as well as consonantal voiced V and unvoiced 'F. The fourth form, representing the unvoiced consonantal value F, was later discarded as unnecessary because of the existence of phi/phe;. Centuries later the Atticists dubbed the unvoiced consonantal vav 'a digamma.'

BTW, FOUR forms is correct. There are darned good reasons why I dislike referring to the VAV as WAW... the Phoenician writing system (and its borrowers) did distinguish among voiced and unvoiced consonantal and vocalic vavs!

Excuse the pun, but I am beginning to wonder just who or what is imperfect if the distinctions between voiced and unvoiced and vocalic and consonantal VAVs written into the documents are ignored. (And they are not the only multiple forms ignored.)

The greatest irony of all this is that after 70 CE Hebrew writing systems began to standardize and eventually, over centuries, necessitated full vocalization notation while the Phoenician/Hebraic/Aramaic tradition was carried forth in the Christian writing systems.To this day, the Romance and Germanic languages, for instance, use variant forms, only we dub them accents such as circumflex,grave, umlaut, etc..

BTW, Ayin, just as Latin 'O' and Greek Omega, do not have variant forms within a given script design They are the mensural base for all script designs -- whether Semitic or Indo-European..

RF:
The real issue is whether WAYYIQTOL is a conjugation distinct from
YIQTOL/WEYIQTOL. The point I would like to stress is that we neither find
any morphological difference nor any semantic difference between WEYIQTOL
and WAYYIQTOL before the Masoretes. I estimate than 93,1% of the WAYYIQTOLs
and 53,4% of the QATALs in the MT have past reference, . This is the situation
that grammarians have not been able to fathom from the Middle ages and until
present: If the WAYYIQTOLs are nothing but YIQTOLs with prefixed
conjunctions, why are WAYYIQTOLs the primary form used in past narratives
together with the QATALs?

RISA:
Well, tell you what, many years ago I was sitting with my then fiancee in the living room listening to a discussion of this precise point between my late father-in-law, Professor Morris Altman, and his friend, Professor Benno Landsberger. (To give an idea of just how long ago this was.) Of course Kimchi, et al. were mentioned. My father-in-law, stated that the confusion over the VAYYIQTOL arose from the fact that the form denoted timelessness, hence necessarily encompassed past, present, and future all at once.After some thought, 'Old Landsberger' as my late husband affectionately called him, agreed that this seemed to be the case.

Hebrew lends itself to such word playing. And his assertion sure does solve the problems of when does it denote past or future; it means both. Its use in dreams makes his point self-evident. Dreams are outside normal time. Thus, yes, the VAYYIQTOL is a distinct conjugation. (And I strongly doubt that it was an invention of the Masoretes. Such a brilliant solution to the presentation of timelessness was not among their capabilities; You need a great songsmith for this type of genius.).

I have been enjoying this entire thread as it wiggled around.

Thanks again,

Rochelle

[snip[





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