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  • 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: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:38:08 +1100

Hi Rolf,

Thank you for replying. Some good points are raised below (by you, that
is, not necessarily by me!).





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.


True. But semantic tests of the like of which you have performed can be made. So would not rule out that it is impossible for a wayyiqtol to occasionally be progressive, esp. in poetry. However, I am able to say this because I do not operate with a theory of uncancellable semantics. But I still maintain that this is not the prototypical meaning of wayyiqtol. So your "uncancellable semantics" and my "prototyical meaning/semantics" do not match.


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


None of my questions are really addressed by you directly. Again, you seek to answer them by stating your basic premises and methodology. But these are the very things I am questioning. Also this post:

https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew/2007-March/031766.html


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.

Note that grammaticalisation can also EXTEND meaning. There's plenty of stuff on this in the linguistic literature. Regarding BH verbs, this is likely to have occurred with, say, the hithpael. The range of meanings is neatly described by Anstey 2005: 74-76, ie reflexive, grooming/body motion, naturally reciprocal, anticausative, and generic passive. It likely that meaning has been extended over time towards the passive, but it has not lost its reflexive function. Some, eg W-O, claim that it expresses even the passive and not just generic/gnomic passive. But do you see the problem if I were to follow your method? What is the uncancellable semantics denoted by the hithpael binyan? The more we move to "passive" the less "reflexive" the semantic, but the more "passive" the semantics, the less "reflexive". However, similarity exists between anticausative and generic passive and similarly reflexive and body motion and reciprocal. But if I were to strictly follow your approach you have applied to the verbal system, I am indeed very hard pressed to find a common denominator between all of these "functions". I see this to be the same problem with your approach to the verbal system and this issue really needs addressing in my opinion.



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.


True.

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.


I agree that it is difficult to see evidence of grammaticalisation in our texts regarding wayyiqtol. The FORM itself, whichever opinion you side with regarding its makeup, is a grammaticalised form. My opinion is the meaning of the form is fairly uniform, ie it is predominantly the narrative verb.

The possible arenas for possible grammaticalisation, however, which I have mentioned before, are not really discussed in your dissertation. a) the effect of the introduction of qatal into the paradigm of prefix verbs. b) qatal used as something of a narration verb in direct speech. c) the use of qatal in LBH vis-a-vis classical/standard BH (this last one is an exceedingly difficult question due to the dialectical issues in the later books, ie Judean works strongly resemble Judean Hebrew etc).



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.


I agree that Akkadian is problematic. Ugaritic I would disagree on. And you miss out Amarna.


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.


Good and reasonable questions. You will know by running your semantic tests on the verbs and determining prototypical meaning. Determining uncancellable meaning will lead you astray in that likely either tense or aspect (as you have done) will have to be modified some how in order for it not to be cancelled. This is assuming that what we find in these texts are indeed non-grammaticalising verbs that are not used in any way for rhetorical impact etc where tense or aspect is deliberately "cancelled".




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?"


Yes, and I have put the question back to you in reverse and I did not receive a satisfactory answer: "How can verb forms each of which 'represent' two aspects have a primarily temporal value?"

W-O's question is only a problem if a methodology of uncancellable semantics is adopted. I have already drawn your attention to Matthew Anstey dissertation where through a constructional analysis he provides the very to W-O's question. The answer is there.

In regards to my question I put to you, the answer I find in your dissertation is that "they can't". Well, at least without modifying "aspect" to suit. But why this choice? Couldn't this be seen to be methodological arbitrary? Why not modify "tense" to suit so that some sort of modified tense is found to be "uncancellable" between all uses of a verb?

I remain at a loss to see how your methodology is able to work in existent multifunctionality other than in pinpointing the meaning of the use of each individual verbs. The overarching methodology of "uncancellable semantics" is, in my opinion, unable to determine "linguistic convention" from "semantic meaning" in a model of language where these are separate.


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


Anstey, Matthew P. 2005. “Towards a Typological Presentation of Tiberian Hebrew.” Hebrew Studies 46: 71-128.


Regards,
David Kummerow.




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