Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Karl,

See my comments below.

snip

> > Regarding the questions, everybody is unanimous these days that
> > paragogic nun is only attached to the long prefix verb and ditto for the
> > third-person pronouns augmented with nun. I think the same could be said
> > about the status of the other features diagnostic of the short prefix
> > verb vis-a-vis the long prefix verb.
> Thanks. I have noticed the paragogic nun, but as it has minimal affect
> on lexicography, if any, I have not studied its distribution. But in
> so far that it is a sign of grammaticalization, and as far as it has
> been described to me, Rolf's dissertation is about grammaticalization,
> I agree that he should at least address the question of the paragogic
> nun, either why it is not important or what is his answer to it.

RF
First I suggest that you read the discussion of Waltke/O´Connor regarding
NUN paragogicum. The book shows correctly that the NUN is a remnant of 
something, and that
its previous and present significance is an open question. There may also be
a NUN paragogicum in a few suffix forms (Deuteronmy 8;
:3,16; Isaiah 26:16), but that does not matter for my argument.
Moreover, Waltke/O´Connor (p. 516) lists 4 WAYYIQTOLs with paragogic NUN.

Two of the reasons why I see no significance in paragogic NUN in connection
with the question regarding the the number and meaning of the conjugations
in classical Hebrew are , 1) Dave´s assumptions needed to give the
occurrence of paragogic NUN significance, and 2) the problem of induction.

As for 1): It seems to me that Dave assumes that Hebrew has two different
prefix conjugations or at least remnants of such, one long and the other
short, and the short one is the basis for the WAYYIQTOLs. Since paragogic
NUN is only attached to the long prefix form, it distinguishes this long
form from the short form. If I have understood Dave correctly, I dispute
this premise. I see that some verbs in Hebrew are short or apocopated, but
that  may be for phonological or other reasons. And here again we have the
need for ascrupulous distinction between semantics and pragmatics. In order
to demonstrate the existence of a short and a long prefix form by pointing
to normal and to short/apocopated prefix forms, one has to exclude all other
reasons for the shortness/apocopation than that they belong to two separate
conjugations. Thus, the argument "paragogic NUN is only attached to the long
prefix verb, therefore it distinguishes the long prefix verb from the short
one" is completely circular as long as the existence of long and short forms
has not been proven.

As for 2): The problem of induction tells us that confirmatory data do not
prove anything. This is so since the existence of the data could have been
caused by a host of different factors. Scientific progress is generally
caused by falsification and not by confirmation. Moreover, the number of the
300 examples of paragogic NUN is very small. Even the 6,900 cases, which,
according to Hoftijzer  *could* have the ending, do not add much,
because of the uncertainty of "could".

I did not neglect the paragogic NUN in my study, but I did not see any 
reason to discuss it in my disertation, since
it has no bearing at all on its principal questions.

> > ...
> > Regards,
> > David Kummerow.
> Karl W. Randolph.
> _______________________________________________

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo