Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

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.