Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Joseph,

The question of method relates to what we are 
looking for. Are we looking for the use of verbs 
in particular situations (e.g direct speech etc); 
are we looking for the function of verb forms in 
different contexts (e.g. foreground, background 
etc.); or are we looking for the meaning of the 
verb forms (e.g. tense/aspect etc.)

In the natural sciences, one is looking for the 
smallest possible units to study, because the 
more units you have to account for at the same 
time, the less certain are your conclusions. The 
ideal situation in linguistics is the minimal 
pair situation, because here there is only one 
difference to account for. The more differences 
to account for at the same time, the less certain 
are your conclusions.

I am well acquainted with the writings of 
Niccacci; many years ago we even had several 
discussions on b-hebrew. In my dissertation, four 
times I refer  to Niccacci, and I show why his 
methods are not usable for my purpose. Harald 
Weinrich, who introduced the method, admitted 
that the very method was unassailable; it simply 
could not be tested!  As a matter of fact, we 
cannot reach a point that is longer away from the 
ideal minimal pair situations than the discourse 
analysis of Weinrich and Niccacci. When discourse 
analysis is applied to Hebrew verbs, whole chunks 
of texts with dozens of different factors are 
studied at the same time. And the certainty of 
our conclusions, at least as far as meaning is 
concerned, decreases with the numbers of factors 
we have to account for. So, much circular 
reasoning is inherent in this method. A fine 
discussion of the problems with Weinrich's method 
is found in C. Backe (1985) "Verbal Aspect and 
its Application to Present Day English 
(particularly pp. 18-25).

Please note that I am not rejecting Niccacci's 
method. Many good results can be obtained by 
applying this method, because it is a fine tool 
to describe different *uses* of BH verbs. But it 
is completely inadequate for finding the meaning 
of the Hebrew verb forms. For example, the method 
cannot be used to answer the question: "Is the 
meaning of the WAYYIQTOL form different from the 
meaning of the YIQTOL form, or is the WAYYIQTOL 
simply a YIQTOL with a prefixed conjunction?" 
And, "Does BH have aspects, and in that case, how 
should we define a BH aspect?" So, Niccacci's 
method is good to use in some situations but not 
in others.

The objective of my method, which previously 
never have been applied to BH verbs, is to 
distinguish between semantics and pragmatics, and 
try to find the *meaning* of the BH verb forms. 
Three parameters are used, namely deictic center 
(C), reference time (RT) and event time (ET). 
These parameters were first defined in  H. 
Reichenbach (1947) "Elements of symbolic Logic". 
They are further discussed in B. Comri (1976) 
"Aspect,"  and the clearest discussion of the 
parameters is found in M. Broman Olsen (1997) "A 
Semantic and Pragmatic Model  of Lexical and 
Grammatical Aspect".

The method builds on very few assumptions, except 
the one that dead languages are basically similar 
to living languages and can be studied by the 
same methods. The application of the method is 
very simple. First the dead language is tested 
for tense, which is defined as " grammaticalized 
location in time" (Comrie). This means that a 
verb may have past reference without expressing 
tense-this is pragmatics versus semantics.  In 
order to test BH for tense, the relationship 
between C and RT in all the verbs were considered 
and mapped. (Syntactic questions were of course 
considered, but foregound/background or 
mainline/secondary line are simply irrelevant for 
the relationship between C and RT. And  a 
scrupulous distinction between verb semantics and 
pragmatics can only be achieved on the sentence 
level!) If a language has tense (Burmese, for 
example, does not have tenses), we expect that 
one or more verb forms have uniform time 
patterns. We would expect that one form would 
only have past reference except in special cases. 
This is the case with simple past in English, but 
my mapping shows that no such form exists in BH, 
not even the WAYYIQTOL.  BH expresses time, but 
not with one particular form.

When BH does not have tenses, do we find aspects? 
The same parameters can be used to answer that 
question, because aspect can be seen as the 
relationship between event time (ET) and 
reference time (RT). It is argued in my 
dissertation that this relationship has three 
different expressions, and because there are two 
aspects, the aspects in different languages can 
be compared and defined in six different ways. I 
found that the aspects in English and Hebrew were 
similar in three respects and different in three. 
Because the most important aspect was different, 
aspects in Hebrew and English are very different 
as far as their definition is concerned. My 
conclusion is that YIQTOL,WAYYIQTOL,  and 
WEYIQTOL semantically represent the imperfective 
aspect, but they  sometimes/often are 
functionally (pragmatically) different. And 
further, QATAL and WEQATAL semantically represent 
the perfective aspect, but sometimes/often they 
functionally (pragmatically) are different.

Different methods can serve different purposes. I 
do not dispute Randall's finds (and Niccacci's) 
that the participle often is used for present 
reference in direct speech. I just argue that 
this cannot be extrapolated to encompass all BH 
with the claim that the participle is THE present 
form; because all the other forms can be used 
with present reference as well. As mentioned, I 
do not dispute that Niccacci's method is a fine 
method to map the *use* of the verb forms in BH 
and to outline the linguistic conventions of the 
language. But I argue that much circularity is 
seen in the attempts to try to paint uniform 
patterns. And, the method cannot be used to find 
the semantic meaning of BH verbs. The best 
approach for this purpose, in my view, is to 
analyze all verbs from the point of view of tense 
( deictic time=the relationship between the 
deictic center and reference time) and aspect 
(non-deictic time= the relationship between 
reference time and event time). Different methods 
must be used for different purposes, and each 
method must be evaluated in relation to its 
stated goals, whether or not they can be reached.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo



> Randall
>
>
>
> I think you are absolutely right, and your 
> contention seems to be exactly the same as that 
> of Alviero Niccacci when he maintains that the 
> simple nominal clause and the participial clause 
> are used to represent the temporal axis of the 
> present in direct speech. He has recently argued 
> that this is also the case in poetry in a recent 
> chapter. In this same chapter (to be found in 
> Biblical Hebrew in its Northwest Semitic 
> Setting) he challenges the notion that qatal or 
> yiqtol ever refer to the present. He argues that 
> qatal and yiqtol can both refer to the past, but 
> when they do "they signal a shift from 
> main-line, punctual information (qatal) to 
> secondary-line, 
> repeated/habitual/explanatory/descriptive 
> information (yiqtol)". I think every serious 
> Hebraist (including those on this list) needs to 
> come to terms with his arguments and his unique 
> starting point for the analysis of biblical 
> Hebrew based on the linguistic model of Harald 
> Weinrich even if he winds up disagreeing.  If 
> one analyses all 80,000 occurrences of the verb 
> in Hebrew, but does it with reference to the 
> sentence level only, or without making 
> distinctions in linguistic attitude (namely 
> narrative vs. comment) then one's beginning 
> methodological foundation may be, I stress "may 
> be" flawed and inadequate.
>
>
>
> Rolf
>
>
>
> I don't know if your analysis proceeded this 
> way, but if it did, perhaps it would be 
> appropriate to consider if this is the best way 
> to procede with an analysis of BH syntax in 
> light of the arguments of the Niccaccis and 
> others who point out the inadequacies of such an 
> approach.
>
>
>
> Joseph Justiss
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web.  Try  Bing now
> http://www.bing.com?form=MFEHPG&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MFEHPG_Core_tagline_try 
> bing_1x1
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew