Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 05/03/2007 16:23, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> Dear Peter,
>
> You paint a carricature of my position. In view of all the times we have
> discussed Hebrew verbs, you should be able to do better. I do not deny
> exceptions and a substandard use of language. What I challenge is ad hoc
> explanations in order to save a hypothesis. Therefore I make a linguistic
> demand that exceptions must be explained. For example, In the 19th century
> QATAL was viewed as past tense, and at the end of the century, as past tense
> or the perfective aspect. It was discovered that several QATALs had future
> reference, and in order to save the theory, the "prophetic perfect" was
> postulated, the action was completed in the mind of the prophet. (A. B.
> Davidson (1894) "Hebrew syntax") is a good example. The view has later been
> parroted by different grammarians, but I have never seen anyone proving the
> claim.
>   

Several quite reasonable explanations of this situation have been put 
forward, mostly based on the idea (for which there is good phonological 
evidence) that WAYYIQTOL comes from a quite different early Semitic verb 
form from regular YIQTOL.
> The principle of a property being uncancellable is very simple: Even a
> shoolboy understands that the clauses "I will come yesterday" and "I came
> tomorrow" are ungrammatical. There is no purpose in trying to find a special 
> situation where one of the clauses can be used.
>   

"If I came tomorrow, I would be able to see him before he goes away the 
next day". This perfectly grammatical sentence proves that past tense is 
not uncancellable in English. Similarly there are perfectly grammatical 
constructions in which the past verb form in Hebrew is used with future 
reference, and vice versa. I don't see the difference in principle; if 
one is semantic, the other is semantic, if one is pragmatic, the other 
is pragmatic, or maybe this is not a meaningful distinction.

In fact the reason why "If I came tomorrow..." is grammatical is that 
this is not really a past tense, but a subjunctive, but in English the 
past and the subjunctive have acquired almost identical forms. But the 
forms are distinct for the verb "to be", so "If I were in town 
tomorrow..." is historically more correct, not "If I was in town 
tomorrow..." Nevertheless, many speakers would say the latter because 
this subjunctive distinction is fading away. This is very similar to the 
evidence, not always consistent, from certain verb forms e.g. lamed-he 
verbs that WAYYIQTOL is "apocopated" which, according to a very 
plausible explanation, means that it comes from an originally separate 
verb paradigm which has mostly merged with regular YIQTOL.

> If QATAL represents past tense, ...

I am not arguing this, rather more like that QATAL is perfective aspect. 
I think we agree on this one, although we might disagree on precise 
definitions. My disagreement with you is largely on WAYYIQTOL, which I 
see as also perfective and semantically as well as morphologically 
distinct from imperfective YIQTOL.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://www.qaya.org/blog/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/