Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 13/03/2007 08:19, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> ...
> >  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 himself uses 
> > reasonings that are still thinner; he confuses past reference and past 
> > tense and Aktionsart and aspect. ...
> >     
>
>   
Is what you really mean that he is using a different theoretical model 
from yours? You are welcome to your own model, but you really shouldn't 
use this kind of language to shoot down people who are working with a 
different model, which may be just as valid and productive as your own, 
or more so.

> > ... 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. ...

The real lesson we can learn from this is that we have to be careful how 
we use Akkadian data for Hebrew. There is nothing in Akkadian to rule 
out the possibility that "the Hebrew wayyiqtol form can portray an 
iterative event", but the real question is, does it do so in Hebrew? But 
what if you can find examples in Hebrew like "day and night I wept over 
him" using WAYYIQTOL? Does that imply that WAYYIQTOL is imperfective? 
No, no more than the English version of this implies that "wept" is 
imperfective. I don't know the full context in the Akkadian, but it 
would seem to me that such a statement in English would refer to a past 
period which is over, implicitly something like "for several weeks after 
his death", and so this is an example of perfective aspect being used, 
quite regularly, for an even extended in time but which is now being 
viewed from outside as a single complete event.

> ... 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. ...

On the contrary, I have countered this by providing clear evidence that 
for lamed-he verbs there are in the unpointed text two different prefix 
forms, one apocopated and always preceded with vav and the other not 
apocopated, which are distinct (but occasionally confused) at least in 
the 3rd person singular. And that is quite apart from the jussive. I 
await your response to my evidence for this, posted here on 10th March.

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