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  • From: "Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>
  • 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 15:53:27 -0000

Dear David,


snip


I think it is hard for you to grasp my basic point. What I criticize is that
so many claims regarding Hebrew verbs are made in grammars and textbooks but
they can not be tested. For example, when I refer to particular passages with
YIQTOLs and WAYYIQTOLs with past reference and ask why we know that the
action of the YIQTOL with past reference is progressive (or something else),
and the same is not the case with the WAYYIQTOLs, the answers are
interpretations of the particular verses where the YIQTOLs are taken as
progressive or modal and the WAYYIQTOLs are not. But this begs the question
why, since progressive interpretations could equally well have been given to
the WAYYIQTOLs. I would go so far as to say that most of the explanations of
verbs in Hebrew grammars are circular subjective judgements, they are just
claims that cannot be tested. This was the situation that really bothered me
when I came from the natural sciences to Semitics.

While some of your questions are based on assumptions which takes them
outside my Popperian approach, some are not. One such example is
grammaticalisation.

Grammaticalisation means that a word form gradually developes into another
form (e.g., a substantive which becomes a preposition; this may particularly
be seen in Ge´ez), or that a word form with multiple functions gradually
looses functions until it only has one function. A grammaticalization
process from aspect to tense is absolutely possible. How can we detect a
grammaticalisation process. The ideal situation would be to have a corpus of
texts covering a particular time span, where we could point to a word form
having one particular or multiple functions in the oldest texts, then we
could follow the gradual change, until we in the yougest texts could see the
result of the grammaticalisation process. The ideal situation is not often
obtainable, but the minimum requirement to speak of a grammaticalisation
process is to have texts indicating a beginning and other texts indicating
the process.

I will apply my linguistic theories to this situation with the following
prediction: If the WAYYIQTOL form in the Tanakh is in a grammaticalisation
process from aspect to tense, we will expect to find the WAYYIQTOL (or its
predecessor) in the older texts as an aspect. Then we expect to find in texts
of younger and younger age that the WAYYIQTOL looses its aspectual properties
until it, in the youngest texts is fully grammaticalised as a past tense.
This prediction can logically only be applied to one language, but to be
generous, it is granted that it can also encompass the cognate languages.
Now, according to scientific thinking, if the prediction is fulfilled, what
have we proved? Nothing, because there may be other reasons for the pattern
(cf. the problem of induction)! But we have made the hypothesis of a
grammaticalisation process more likely. If the prediction is contradicted,
what have we then showed? We may have falsified the hypothesis, but to be
sure we must take Duhem´s problem into consideration. Let us apply the
prediction.

For classical Hebrew we have the WAYYIQTOL form, which is taken as a fully
grammaticalised past tense, or as being partially grammaticalised (here we
cannot speak of "tense," since a "tense" is not partially grammaticalised).
Some would say that the grammaticalisation process started with a short
preterit prefix form, and others would say the process started with an
aspect. Our first task is to find the original form. The only candidates in
classical Hebrew are YIQTOLs with past reference interpreted as preterits in
Psalms believed to be old. But how can we know whether these are tenses or
aspects? It is exactly the same situation as when Joûon-Muraoka says that
some YIQTOLs with past reference are progressive and others are punctual.
This is an excellent example of circularity, and there are no controls! This
means that the start of a supposed grammaticalisation process cannot be found
in the Tanakh.

Then one has to seek recourse in the cognate languages. But linguistically
speaking, this is a very big leap, since we cannot take for granted that any
form or use in one language is similar to a form or use in another language.
Two candidates have been used: IPRUS and IPARRAS in Akkadian and YAQTUL and
YAQTULU in Ugaritic. The Akkadian connection is very problematic for two
reasons, 1) the great difference between Akkadian and Hebrew, and 2) the
difference between the forms is a vowel between first and second radical.
This means that if the Akkadian contrast was found in Hebrew, we would expect
a Qal YIQTOL and YEQATTAL or YEQATTEL in Hebrew, but we do not find such a
contrast. The Hebrew YIQTOL is morphologically similar to the short Akkadian
form IPRUS, and the same is true in the WAYYIQTOLs as well. The second
connection is between Ugritic and Hebrew. Since Ugaritic has only three
vowels expressed by three different forms of aleph, any possible difference
between prefix forms can only be seen in roots with final aleph. These are
few, and there is no way to know with certainty that there are two prefix
forms, one YAQTUL and another YAQTULU. The prefix forms are used with both
past and future reference, and apparently as modals as well. The circularity
in the interpretation of Ugaritic verbs where a short preterit is postulated
is even greater than in Hebrew, if that is possible, since vowels are lacking.

There are also other very important problems. If we could identify a possible
predecessor of WAYYIQTOL in Ugaritic, how could we know whether this form was
a preterit, a perfective or an imperfective aspect, since all three can have
past reference. Only circular answers are possible. The same is true in the
Tanakh itself, for how can we know that a WAYYIQTOL is a partly
grammaticalised past tense, or a fully grammaticalised past tense, or a
perfective or an imperfective aspect just by looking at one particular form
in its context? But back to the prediction. Do we see any pattern in the
books of the Tanakh?. We can to some extent identify the younger books, but
the dating of the other books by linguisticAL means (the only ones possible)
are fraught with problems. What is perfectly clear, however, is that it is
not possible to say that the meaning of WAYYIQTOL in the younger books is
different from the meaning in the other books. Some, such as Kutcher, has
argued that the frequency of WAYYIQTOL is lower in the younger books, but a
statistical test of this in my dissertation showed that this was not the
case. Clearly, the prediction above has not been fulfilled.


Any approach to the verbal system of a dead language must entail subjective
judgements. But in order to reduce these and to make testable results, I
havechosen todealwith the text and not with lofty hypotheses regarding what
may have happened in the past. this appraoch deals with semantic meaning, and
the functions of the verbs are only tools that are used in order to isolate
the semantic meaning. At the outset this is a very simple approach. A general
prediction regarding tense can be: If one or more of the Hebrew conjugations
code for tense, we will expect that verbs with one morphology refers to the
past or to the future and not that all the conjugations can have past,
present, and future reference. This prediction is not fulfilled, and my
conclusion is that tense is not grammticalised in Hebrew. It is interesting
that Waltke and O´Connor in principle accepts my prediction. The book says
(p. 460):

"How can forms each of which "represent" all three English major tenses have
a primarily temporal value?"

And as mentioned above, there are not clear data for a grammaticalisation
process. As already mentioned, exceptions that can be linguistically
explained are accepted, but not exceptions with ad hoc explanations. In the
discussion of exceptions the question of multifunctionality will have a
place.



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]




Regards,
David Kummerow.
_______________________________________________


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
>From hholmyard3 AT earthlink.net Thu Mar 22 12:22:51 2007
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Mis(.)rayim
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Dear list,

here is an interesting quote that rehashes some of
wwhat has been said but gives another theory about
Mis(.)rayim:
http://www.geocities.com/wally_mo/why_egypt.html

The question is often asked "Why is it called
Egypt?" This question can best be answered
correctly by first remembering that the Ancient
Egyptian language is NOT a dead language. It not
only survives as Coptic Egyptian, but also in
related languages such as Wolof (Senegal) and
Yoruba (Nigeria). If this fact is kept in mind,
one cannot drift into spurious speculations.

Kemet: The Original Name of Egypt

The oldest, official name for Egypt, by the
Ancient Egyptians themselves, is Kmt (Keme) or
Black. The contemporary Egyptian (Coptic) words
for Egypt are (depending on the particular
dialect): Kame, Keme, Kimi, and Kheme - all of
which mean Black. Also in Coptic Egyptian we
have, kem, kame, kmi, kmem, kmom or "to be black."
The Ancient Egyptians referred to themselves as
Kmtjw (Kemetu) and Kmmw (Kmemu) or Black people
(In contemporary Egyptian: Kmemou=Black people).
In Wolof, Khem means "burnt to black."

"Egypt": Greek Corruptions

The Greeks corrupted an Ancient Egyptian name for
Memphis - Ht-Ki-Pth (hay-gip-Toh), "The Temple of
Ptoh's Essence," to Aigyptos. Keeping in mind
that the Greeks had a convention of adding an 's'
to Ancient Egyptian proper nouns:
Osiri (Usiri in contemporary Egyptian) > Osiris
Isi (Ese in contemporary Egyptian) > Isis
Pth(Toh) > Tos

"Misr" and "Mizraim": Semitic Corruptions

British Egyptologist E.A.W. Budge was one of the
first to remark that "The name Mizraim may have
been given Egypt (by foreigners) in respect of its
double wall."
The name Misr is indeed a Semiticized form of
Ancient Egyptian:
Medjr = walled district
Medjre = tower, fortress
These Ancient Egyptian words became Meetsrayeem
(Egypt) and Meetsree (Egyptian) in Hebrew, and in
Arabic; Misr and Masri respectively. It is the
same as Westerners calling China, "China," after
the original Qin dynasty emperor ("Tschina" in
Indo-European). The Chinese, however, call their
country Zhongguo or 'the Middle Kingdom.'

Yours,
Harold Holmyard






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