Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

> Dear Yitzhak,
>  

> In my comments below I will concentrate on the more important issue 
> whether the cognate languages can be of any help for our understanding 
> of the meaning of classical Hebrew verbs.
>  
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com 
> <mailto:yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>>
> To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org <mailto:b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>>
> Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2007 10:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verbal Aspect (was Tenses - Deut 6:4)

snip

> >
> >> I am open for the possibility that the same verb form could and can 
> be used
> >> with different senses. In Akkadian, for example, it is the short 
> IPRUS, which often
> >> refer to the past, that is used in the wish-form precative. And we 
> have a similar
> >> sitution in Ugaritic. But the point I very often have stressed is 
> that in order to use
> >> such  multiple functions in a grammatical theory, we must 
> demonstrate its existence,
> >> not just assume it. That is the reason why I refuse to deal with 
> concepts such as
> >> Proto-Semitic or Proto-Hebrew, and that I challenge those who 
> believe that the
> >> antecedent of WAYYIQTOL is an old short preterit, to prove it. I 
> agree with you
> >> that there are remnants in the Hebrew of the Tanakh of stems that 
> earlier were
> >> used; there is, for example just a single verb in the 
> causative-reflexive stem.
> >
> > Well, as I suppose you probably know, the advance of scholars towards
> > analysis of "waw-conversive" as in fact waw-consecutive before a 
> preterite was
> > grounded in advances in scholarship in the Amarna texts.  It was the 
> Amarna
> > texts which led to a renewed analysis of the Biblical verb forms on 
> the basis
> > of those texts.  I am not sure why you think that claims regarding 
> Proto-Hebrew
> > cannot be utilized because its existence is not "proven" but "assumed"
> > -- do you
> > simply deny that Amarna vocables can teach us about an earlier stage 
> of the
> > Hebrew language?  do you deny that cognate languages such as Aramaic or
> > Ugaritic can teach us about this earlier stage of the Hebrew 
> language / Proto-
> > Hebrew?  What have Comparative Semitists been doing for the last hundred
> > years if not to demonstrate an Afroasiatic (and daughter stage - 
> Proto-Semitic)
> > language?

RF

>  
> First of all I will say that the study of the cognate Semitic 
> languages is a valuable endeavor; it will help the student better 
> to ascertain the Semitic setting of classical Hebrew and to see the 
> language in a more three dimensional way, so to speak. However, I am 
> afraid that the cognate languages can contribute little in answering 
> the more important questions: Is Hebrew a tense language or an aspect 
> language, or a combination of both?
> Is WAYYIQTOL an independent conjugation with a meaning opposite of 
> YIQTOL, or is it a simple YIQTOL with a prefixed conjunction? The real 
> problem here will be clearly seen if we compare the works of three of 
> the pioneers of comparative Semitics, namely, H. Bauer, G. R. Driver 
> (not S .R. Driver), and F. Rundgren. The conclusions of these three 
> fine scholars are so different that we should not believe that they 
> discussed the same languages (Rundgren included Ge´ez though, which 
> the other two did not). The main question they dealt with was which 
> forms in one language have evolved into which forms in another 
> language or are related to which forms. The application of similar 
> linguistic laws can sometimes be seen and also a pattern of 
> phonological shifts. But the problem is to know the semantic meaning 
> of the very fragmentary data we have from the second millennium and 
> first half of the first millennium B.C.E.
>  
> A few years ago I had a course over four semesters where we only read 
> the Amarna letters, and since I worked with my dissertation I was 
> particularly interested in the verbs. For grammatical questions we 
> used the four volume work of A. Rainey. Rainey's conclusions are 
> generally reliable, but he fails to point to criteria that can be used 
> to find the semantic meaning of the verbs. He shoots down some such 
> criteria that has been taken out of this air, but he himself uses 
> reasonings that are still thinner; he confuses past reference and past 
> tense and Aktionsart and aspect. Below is an excerpt from my 
> dissertation (I am sorry for the problems with the fonts in the 
> transcribed text):

> "A. F. Rainey (1990:407-20) has a lucid discussion on 
> prefix-conjugation patterns in early Northwest Semitic, where he 
> correctly observes (p. 409): "The idea that the Semites only viewed 
> verbal action as completed or incomplete is a European conceit.  It 
> has no basis in fact."  However, Rainey calls the Canaanite yaqtul 
> "Preterit," and he contrasts yaqtul with yaqtulu, the former expressed 
> "a single instance in the past," while the latter denoted 
> "present/future continuous" (p. 409).  The natural question is: Does 
> his conclusion have a basis in fact?
> There is no question that Rainey has a great knowledge of his subject; 
> his four-volume grammatical work on the Amarna tablets, for example, 
> is a superb piece of work.  We should not just reject his conclusions, 
> but we should ask whether they are warranted at this stage, as long as 
> a distinction between past tense (preterit) and past reference is not 
> carried out.  And along the lines presented above, how can we know 
> that one verb form refers to a single act and that another verb form 
> refers to something that continues, when the Aktionsart of the verb 
> used by both forms is durative (continuous)? 

..........

>  Let us then look at the second part of the example in (3).
> (3)
> a-nu-ma is?-s?u-ru u a-nu-ma is?-te-mu UD.KAM-ma u mu-s?a a-wa-temes? 
> s?a LUGAL EN-ia.
> Now I am guarding and now I am heeding day and night the words of the 
> king, my lord.


> Rainey argues that the adverbial "day and night" shows that the 
> yaqtulu implies continuous action.  It is true that the words "day and 
> night" imply continuous action, but they do not necessarily tell us 
> anything about whether this is made visible lexically or aspectually 
> (as in the English iterative example, "Jill has knocked at the door 
> for five minutes," where the iterative interpretation is caused by the 
> adverbial and not by the perfective aspect.).  When Gilgamesh mourns 
> over the death of his friend Enkidu, we read in (4) 


> (4)
> Il-lik-ma a-na s?u-ma-tu a-wi-lu-tim u-ri u mu-s?i e-li-s?u ab-ki
> He went the way (destiny) of mankind; day and night I wept over him.


> Both the Akkadian verbs alaku ("go") and bakû ("weep") are in the 
> iprus conjugation, which is the short prefix form, and which is viewed 
> as preterit.  Yet, this form is used to describe an event that is 
> continuous or iterative!  Thus, we understand that it is the adverbial 
> "day and night" that signals that the situation is iterative or 
> habitual in (4) and not the verb form.  Therefore, Rainey's argument 
> that the adverbial shows that the form yaqtulu indicates continuous 
> action is simply not valid.  The lesson we learn from this is that 
> just as an Akkadian iprus form can portray an iterative event as much 
> as an iparras form, so the Hebrew wayyiqtol form can portray an 
> iterative event just as can a yiqtol form.  Therefore, we must be very 
> careful when we argue in favor of an aspectual meaning of a particular 
> Hebrew form on the basis of the context.  Only in cases where that 
> meaning definitely can be connected with the verb form alone and no 
> other linguistic factors, will our identification be valid."

In my dissertation I discuss Akkadian, the Amarna letters, Phoenician 
and Punic, Ugaritic, and Aramaic from the point of view of whether the 
verbs of  these languages can throw any light on the *meaning* of the 
Hebrew verbs. The answer is negative.

> >
> >> As for Masoretic pointing, I believe it accurately represents the 
> vowels that were
> >> used at the end of the first millennium B.C.E. (with a few 
> exceptions), and I will
> >> neither question the pointing, nor the voclization without concrete 
> evidence.
> >
> > This is a nice belief.  But if you take into account that there were
> > several sound
> > shifts (long a > qamats, short tsere > segol), loss of many short
> > vowels (compare
> > "bywmy" (*[bayome:] of DSS with [bi:me:] of the MT, or "xwzyr"
> > *[x(o/u)(z)zi:r] of the
> > DSS with [xazi:r] of the MT), and a loss of phonemic vowel length and
> > adoption of
> > standardized vowel lengths, to name some major changes, that you 
> realize that
> > there are more than a few exceptions.  The vocalization c. 850 CE 
> cannot be
> > understood to represent the vocalization of the text as it was
> > pronounced c. 150
> > BCE (for those texts that existed c. 150 BCE).
> >
> >> I am also positive to the accuracy of  the consonantal text of the 
> Masoretes.
> >> For example, the great Isaiah scroll   (1QIsaa) is very close to 
> the Masoretic Isaiah,
> >> and even though there are greater variations in some DSS, I think a 
> good case can
> >> be made for the existence of a consonant text close to the 
> Masoretic text around
> >> the beginning ofthe first millennium BCE.
> >
> > While a similar text did exist, the question is exactly regarding
> > those exceptions --
> > such as an he (or absence of he) in lamed-he prefix-conjugations, or a
> > use of a waw
> > in front of a yqtl form.  We can't trust that the text was exactly the
> > same on these
> > cases because some changes were or could have still been adopted in the
> > consonantal text.

RF
I accept of course that sound shifts have occurred, but the picture is 
basically fragmentary.
In order not to be misunderstood I would like to stress that I basically 
use the unpointed text of the Tanakh and the DSS. I argue, and this 
cannot be countered, that in the unpointed text only two conjugations 
can be seen, the prefix-forms and the suffix-forms. Some of these have a 
prefixed WAW whose role naturally is taken as a conjunction if the 
context does not demand something different. The  four-component model 
of Hebrew verbs (YIQTOL, WAYYIQTOL, QATAL and WEQATAL) has existed at 
least from the days of D. Kimxi, and it is based upon both consonants 
and vowels. In order to meet other scholars on the same level using the 
same terminology, a great part of my dissertation is a discussion of the 
text with consonants and vowels. On this basis, morphologically a 
four-component model can be defended, However, I argue that when we 
study and analyse *all* the verbs with their consonants and vowels, a 
strong case for a two-component model can be made on the basis of this 
text as well. Thus, for my conclusions I do not need the vowels, and I 
do not need to take a stand regarding the correspondence of Masoretic 
vocalisation and and the vowels used in B.C.E. But in order to adress 
the same questions that other scholars do, I discussed the vocalised text.

> >
> > Yitzhak Sapir
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> >

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo