Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Daniel Purisch <daniel.purisch AT gmail.com>]

Dear John,

I'd just like to pipe in very quickly. You should probably consider  
that our corpus of Biblical Hebrew was written over quite a long  
period of time, bridging many dialects, each with its own peculiar  
phonology. The real miracle is that Biblical Hebrew is so uniform,  
though of course the transmission process and the Masoretic  
vocalization certainly had much to do with that. Another point to  
mention: we group all the gutterals together, but in reality, each  
letter functions a little bit differently. The example that you  
provided below is a case in point. Pe-aleph verbs prefer the LE):E-  
vocalization while pe-ayin verbs prefer the LA(:A - vocalization. In  
addition to this, there are two future tense forms for Paal/Qal, one  
with a characteristic O vowel in the last syllable, and one with a  
characteristic A vowel in the last syllable. The selection of one  
over another is determined by the historical progression of the  
language, and not by simple phonological processes, and therefore one  
must learn the paradigm of each verb. The O-vowel set is by far the  
more common one, and, in my experience, it is the productive one  
today in Modern Hebrew (that is, new verbs seem to always get put  
into this form - evaluate for yourself if this is at all relevant for  
Biblical Hebrew studies...).

For the purposes of a program, I would suggest that you find your  
sources in the verb tables used for Modern Hebrew. Get a book like  
501 Hebrew Verbs, or, what I prefer, Luchot Pealim (http:// 
www.seferisrael.com/product_info.php?products_id=105). The second  
book especially will give you much more detailed (and typo-free)  
charts of verbal conjugations, which will make many of the general  
rules more clear to you, I think. Of course, many of these rules have  
developed in Modern Hebrew to systemize the variation that we find in  
the vocalization of Biblical Hebrew, but if you are looking for  
something straightforward, this may be the best way.

I'll let the others share their comments.

Take care,
Daniel

PS: I'm sure Gesenius's grammar (GKC) is online somewhere. Google it.

On 29/06/2007, at 01:23, Brak wrote:

> Ok, this just might be my last wacko grammar question.
>
> For the Pe Guttural verbs I have two versions listed.
> For example:
> Qal Imperfect 3MS: YA(:AMOD
> Qal Imperfect 3MS: YEX:EZAQ
>
> So why are there two?
> Or better asked: What is the criteria for choosing one over the other?
>
>
> --
>
> B"H
> John Steven
>
> "If you don't behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you
> behave."
> -Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.
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