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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Fw: Verbal Aspect (was Tenses - Deut 6:4)

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Fw: Verbal Aspect (was Tenses - Deut 6:4)
  • Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:06:16 +0000

On 13/03/2007 15:44, Rolf Furuli wrote:
Dear Peter,

Now we have reached the same point as we have so many times in the past, when I see no purpose in commenting on your words. In many ways you work like the Greek SPERMOLOGOS (this relates to your method and not to your person). You search the Internet, find some statistics here and there and use these statistics in your argumentation without ever having made a deep study of the subject itself. ...

No, Rolf, I did not search the Internet for these statistics, I derived them myself from a text based on the Westminster Hebrew Morphology, using a software package.

... The result is a host of loose ends. Let me state that clearly once more: In an unvocalised text of the Tanakh only two conjugations can be morphologically distinguished, a prefix-conjugation and a suffix-conjugation. There is absolutely no way, on the basis of morphology, to know whether a seemingly apocopated prefix-form is what modern grammarians call WAYYIQTOL or WEYIQTOL.

And let me repeat that the facts prove you wrong. The fact is that an apocopated form of the 3rd person singular prefix conjugation of a lamed-he verb with prefixed vav is certainly a WAYYIQTOL rather than a non-jussive WEYIQTOL (that is to say, it was pointed by the Masoretes as WAYYIQTOL rather than WEYIQTOL) - at least to the degree of certainty indicated by only 8 counter-examples out of 1592.

I accept that the argument is not as strong with non-apocopated forms because of the general relative rarity of WEYIQTOL forms, although in fact apocopation of WAYYIQTOL is a stricter rule than non-apocopation of WEYIQTOL.

If you want to dispute the facts or how they have been arrived at, you are welcome to do so. But if you don't, I and other readers here will doubtless conclude that you cannot do so. And since we know that you have the raw data available, we have to assume that you cannot refute the facts only because my facts are correct.

Yes, "we have reached the same point as we have so many times in the past", where I have found an argument against your theories which you cannot answer, and so you simply try to dismiss me with ad hominem arguments like "You search the Internet, find some statistics here and there" and "without ever having made a deep study of the subject", also no doubt "SPERMOLOGOS" but I have no idea what you mean. I have come to recognise that you do this only and always when you find that an error in your arguments has been exposed, but you are not prepared to admit it.

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





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