Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ken Penner" <ken.penner AT acadiau.ca>]

Dear Peter,

I suspect you may be referring to my work when you say a significant change 
had occurred in the Hebrew verb system by the end of the period in which the 
Dead Sea Scrolls were written. (Or were you thinking of  Kutscher?)
It is true that I demonstrated in my dissertation that the DSS Hebrew verbs 
do not grammaticalize aspect (i.e., viewpoint aspect, as defined by Comrie or 
Binnick). But I would not say that this is a change from Biblical Hebrew, 
since I am not convinced that Biblical Hebrew grammaticalized aspect either 
(despite the recent work by Cook and Furuli). Of the theories regarding 
Biblical Hebrew, I am intrigued by those giving prominence to modality (e.g., 
Joosten, Hatav), especially since modality is prominent in Mishnaic Hebrew 
and the evidence from Qumran is consistent with a theory that the verb forms 
grammaticalize modality.

Ken

Ken M. Penner, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies,
Acadia Divinity College,
Wolfville, Nova Scotia,
Canada B4P 2R6.
(902)585-2213
http://purl.org/net/kmpenner/

> On 07/03/2007 16:47, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> > ...
> > To say that "we know that there were significant changes in 
> the Hebrew 
> > verb system " is a very strong statement. ...
> 
> Maybe too strong if related only to the period of the Tanakh. 
> But the period I was talking about included that of the DSS. 
> And I understand that it is generally understood that a 
> significant change had occurred by the end of that period. I 
> agree that earlier changes are less certain.
> 
> --
> Peter Kirk