Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Question for Rolf on the JW outlook on the Hebrew

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Question for Rolf on the JW outlook on the Hebrew
  • Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 09:41:07 +1100

Hi Rolf,

[snip]

the 19th century and up to the present. A typical example is the creation of
the ad hoc hypothesis of "prophetic perfect," which was invented in the
19th centuries. It has since been parroted over and over again in Grammars and
Textbooks, but I have never seen any serious attempt to *prove* it (See
Gesenius-Kautzsch 106, n (p.312) and Waltke-O´Connor 30. 5.1e (pp. 489-490).
And that is natural, since it is a psychological explanation, it requires a
knowledge of the minds of dead prophets.


See Rogland's dissertation. But this is one of the many neglected works in your own dissertation. Interestingly, he uses the same Reichenbachian methodology, yet arrives at vastly different conclusions.


[snip]

When I started my studies of Hebrew, I had two advantages: I was a grown man
with experience, not so easily manipulated as younger students, and I had a
strong theoretical basis for critical thinking. Moreover, the professor who
taught me Semitic languages, E. E. Knudsen, was very knowledgable, had an open
mind, and encouraged his students to do critical thinking different from his own. Under his
supervision I wrote the thesis "Imperfect Consecutive and the Verbal System
of Biblical Hebrew" (362 p) in 1995 for the mag.art.degree (close to an US
Ph.D) and in 2005 I defended the doctoral dissertation, which already has
been reviewed. What did influence me? First of all, the principles I had
learned in my study of the Philosophy of science, not least to find the
smallest possible units and study each of these. I read extensively from
previous Semitic studies (one of the positive remarks of the evaluation committee
for my dissertation was that no important source relevant for the study was
lacking in the bibliography),

Now isn't that an interesting satement, given that I was able to list over 50 references without even having to really give it much thought:

https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew/2007-March/031732.html

How many more there are, I don't know, but I'm of the opinion that the bibliography to be lacking. Now, the evaluation committee saw things differently and that's their prerogative and that's fine. However, I've been able to list a significant number of works unmentioned and unassimilated into the dissertation without giving it much thought. Perhaps I should give it some thought and list some more...

and I realized that published studies of
Hebrew verbs represented blatant violations of the very fundamental
principles of the Philosophy of science (the results of deductive and
inductive studies were taken as proofs for the hypotheses and theories). I
realized that the principles of the study of the natural sciences were not
fully applicable in a humanistic study, particularly not in the study of a
dead language. But the principles could to a great extent be applied, and at
least, they should not be violated. For example, one application of the
falsification principle can be the following prediction: If the WAYYIQTOL is
an independent conjugation coding for past tense, we will expect that the
reference time of the actions of the clauses with WAYYIQTOL in the Tanakh
occur before the deictic center; in a non-technical language: we will expect
the WAYYIQTOLs to have past reference. If we can find a reasonable number of
WAYYIQTOLs with non-past reference, the prediction is falsified.

Not necessarily given that it is language we are talking about. It is falsifiable only if operating with a methodology of semantic uncancellability where the "exceptions" can be explained as you mention below. In any case, "a reasonable number" is subjective. What if I was to say that I accept the number that occur with non-past reference as "reasonable"? You will say that that's "not reasonable"! But it's a subjective assessment. That's why I've kept demanding more answers from you along the lines of identifying the constructional contexts in which non-prototypical uses occur. You have failed to give any response time and time again.

Questions:

1. Explain how your methodology is able to operate in areas of incomplete grammaticalisation? Explain how it is able to explain the movement from an aspectual verb to a tense verb? How is it able to explain when a verb is, say, only partly grammaticalised as a tense? (Do you see the problem here? Once a verb has begun to grammaticalise as a tense, it is no longer wholly aspectual and it is not yet wholly tense. Hence there are two uses, with some correspondence between the two, eg past-perfective, future-imperfactive, etc. However, there will be some used where there will no longer be overlap, eg past-imperfective, future-perfective, etc. So in this situation I am unable to see how a methodology of semantic uncancellability is able to operate, ie the movement of grammaticalisation seems to be to necessarily involve semantic cancellability and bleaching.)

2. Explain how your methodology is able to operate in areas of linguistic multifunctionality? Eg, nouns, verbs, etc? Explain how it is able to operate when there is no intrinsic similarity between the two uses?

3. Explain how your methodology is able to operate if "linguistic convention" does not have any impact on "semantic meaning"? Actually, you don't have to explain this one as it is already answered by your dissertation: you have to redefine aspect to fit all the exceptions! You know, you could have made an hypothesis about tense and tried to prove or disprove that - and would have had to arrive, I strongly suspect, at a redefinition of tense!


I will
quickly
add that in the examples with non-past tense we must be open for textual
corruption, exceptions, special contexts, special conventions in different
genres, diachronic questions, and that a language is a living medium etc. But these issues should be studied in a
scientific way, and the examples should not be brushed away by the argument
that languge is fuzzy, or the WAYYIQTOL is not yet fully grammaticalized as
apast tense. This prediction was a basic tool for my thesis of 1995. The NWT had caused me to be critical towards the modern theories of WAYYIQTOL, but its
grammatical theory did not influence me at all, since this was a study of
text, of all the WAYYIQTOLs of the Tanakh on the basis of the falsification
principle. Grammatical theories therefore were unnecessary.


Rolf, I have not attempted to brush them aside. Regarding qatal, I have sought to give an indication how a tense-prominent position is not incompatible with non-past uses. Time and again, I have sought to interact with your ideas, whereas I see exceedingly little from you. You brush my arguments aside by saying I have brushed things aside! Yet you are doing this repeatedly yourself! Again, you have failed to interact with what I have said. Further, I sought to question your methodology in that I have doubts, as Peter raised also, as to whether it is able to

[snip]

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo



Regards,
David Kummerow.




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page