Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 14/03/2007 09:26, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> Dear David,
>
> Please note that I do not appeal to any uncancellable principle when I claim
> that it is impossible to distinguish between WAYYIQTOLs and WEYIQTOLs in
> unpointed texts. And further, when someone appeals to semantics in this
> connection, this person is arguing in a circle. Exactly the same is true
> when the concept "jussive" is introduced. What you do when you assess an
> unpointed text in the light of semantics, or when you use grammatical
> concepts such as "jussive", you make an interpretation of the grammar of the
> vocalised Masoretic text, and then you extrapolate this interpretation into
> the unpointed text. You can hardly find a better example of circularity.
>
>   
Rolf, thank you for addressing my arguments, but no thanks for 
attributing them to David. Yes, you have a point that there is some 
circularity in my method in that I rely on interpretations of certain 
verbs as jussive which probably partly depend on the Masoretic 
vocalisation. Nevertheless, if the unpointed text can be read at all it 
must be possible to distinguish modal and non-modal verb forms at least 
in most cases. So see below.

> Let me repeat this for the third time: You can only answer the question
> regarding how many conjugations we can distinguish in an unvocalised text by
> morphology and morphology alone. In order to get rid of any circular
> thoughts in our mind when we approach an unpointed text, we must forget
> everything we think we know about Hebrew grammar and just look at the
> consonants of this text. Is this elementary principle really so difficult to
> understand?
>
>   
Thank you for clarifying this principle. Let me address the issue again 
on the basis of this principle. But we will have to modify the principle 
because it is impossible to distinguish between phonologically and 
semantically conditioned distinctions of form "by morphology and 
morphology alone".

Let us again consider lamed-he verbs only. It is clear from consonantal 
morphology alone that there are two variants of the prefix conjugation 
of these verbs, at least in the third person singular, one with a final 
he and one without it. The statistics appear to be as follows, for 
lamed-he verbs in the prefix conjugation, third person singular. These 
are based on what I wrote a few days ago but neutralising the 
conjugation and jussive distinctions I made then. I admit that these 
figures may still include some distinctions made on the basis of the 
vocalisation, and you are welcome to provide alternative figures based 
on the consonantal text alone.

With final he: 987 (933 + 20 + 34)
Without final he: 1754 (20 + 150 + 1584)
With final he and prefixed vav: 91 (51 + 6 + 34)
Without final he but with prefixed vav: 1647 (8 + 55 + 1584)

An interesting point here is that 94% of the "apocopated" forms are 
prefixed with vav but only 9% of non-"apocopated" forms are. But, from 
the consonantal text only, the reason for this could be phonological. 
But what this does make clear is that there are two distinct verb forms. 
In principle it is possible that this is just free variation, but this 
is unlikely. Or it could have a phonological basis, but in that case it 
should be possible to find a phonological rule which explains the 
differences - although I don't demand that the rule be "uncancellable" - 
and I have never seen such a rule formalised. Alternatively, the 
difference could be related to the meaning in the context - which is not 
the same as saying that the distinction is actually semantic in your 
strictly defined sense. To distinguish between these possibilities we 
have to go beyond morphology.

So let's test this meaning-related hypothesis and consider a meaning 
component which is rather easily determined, modality (and here I don't 
include simple future as modal). If we look first at the forms without 
prefixed vav, we will I think find a significant (although not perfect) 
correlation, that forms without final he tend to be modal in meaning and 
forms with final he tend not to be modal. This study should be enough to 
convince anyone that there is a real distinction between modal and 
non-modal (jussive and non-jussive) YIQTOL, without prefixed vav. But if 
we then do a similar study of forms with prefixed vav, we find a very 
different picture. The great majority of forms with prefixed vav are not 
modal, irrespective of whether they have a final he. Instead we find two 
distinct verb forms, one with and one without final he, neither of which 
has a predominantly modal meaning. And the study of forms without the 
prefixed vav has shown that the final he distinction is not a purely 
phonological one but is related to meaning. This also provides a strong 
indication that the prefixed vav has a meaning more than just being a 
conjunction. We can also note that forms without final he are dominant 
in narrative genre but those with final he are mostly found outside 
narrative. This observation makes it very unlikely that the distinction 
is a phonological one, for there can be no direct link between phonology 
and genre.

It seems to me that this is enough evidence to make an a priori case, 
entirely from the consonantal text, that there are two separate verb 
forms here, which are candidates for having semantically distinct 
meanings. Of course this is only the start of a long argument to 
determine what the semantic distinction might be.

Note that my arguments are entirely from the Hebrew Bible. I will not 
address the DSS evidence, partly because this is not my field, but also 
because there may have been significant language changes between the 
classical period and the DSS period. This group is for discussion of 
biblical Hebrew, not DSS Hebrew.

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