Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Dear Rolf,

Why do you dismiss something as "pragmatic"? Indeed, this is where 
meaning differences occur for you, so why should it not (at least in 
principle) have some bearing on morphology? Is not your position that 
pragmatics played a role in the morphology of wayyiqtol by the 
Masoretes? Again, you fail to interact with the issues. Regarding 
paragogic nun and the third-person pronouns augmented with nun, you 
dismiss the question without any real explanation. Indeed, you cite the 
old work of Hoftijzer, but there are more recent works which do not 
appear in your dissertation. I remain unconvinced because you do not 
answer my questions.

Regards,
David Kummerow.


> Dear David,
>
> The first three points below deal with morphological questions and could in
> principle be relevant for my quest of finding the semantic meaning of the
> verb forms; the last two are pragmatic in nature and are not relevant.
> Because I have analysed all the verbs, I have also analysed all the forms
> with an extra NUN. In my view, the arguments regarding long and short forms
> that are semantically distinctive have no real basis. They build on several
> assumptions which seem to be wrong, and without the assumptions the NUNs
> tell us nothing regarding Semantic meaning ( Cf. J. Hoftijzer (1985)
> "Function and Use of Imperfect Forms with Nun Paragogicum in Classical
> Hebrew."  I have also carefully analysed the temporal adverbs/adverbials
> including "yesterday" and "tomorrow". The examples of these two are too few
> to have importance and therefore have not received a special treatment in
> the dissertation, but a few temporal adverbs have been discussed in more
> detail.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Rolf Furuli
> University of Oslo