Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Rolf:

I too have to leave in a few minutes, so will comment on only one aspect 
below.

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 6:28 AM, Rolf Furuli<furuli AT online.no> wrote:
> Dear Karl,
>
> In discussions of Hebrew verbs we often hear repeated over and over
> again that the meaning of Hebrew verbs is different in prose and in
> poetry.
>
Sorry if there is any confusion.

My point was not that there is different meaning between poetry and
prose, rather the relative frequencies of usage between Yiqtol, Katal
and participles whether prose or poetry. Just as modern, on the street
natively spoken English uses the participle more often for the present
than it is used in written English, so I suspect that spoken Biblical
Hebrew used the participle more often than written Biblical Hebrew.

Even in the Bible spoken present was used in the Qatal in Exodus 3:7,
9, 19, six times, as an example. If we look at Isaiah 36–37 we should
find more examples, e.g. 36:7. But so far I have found only in poetry
the use of the Yiqtol to refer to the present, not a difference of
meaning, just a difference of frequency.

Sorry for the poor communication.

> Best regards,
>
> Rolf Furuli
> University of Oslo
>
Karl W. Randolph.
>
>>After reading Randall's and Rolf's comments, I did a quick read of
>>Proverbs 16-17 (it was on my schedule anyways). While it is true that
>>this is poetry, I noticed that the largest number of verbs with
>>present tense meanings were imperfects, with participles making up the
>>second most common, while perfects by far least often used, though
>>even those mostly with present meaning. (I could go back and do
>>statistical analysis, but I don't think that is necessary.)
>>
>>A question comes up, how much diglossia was there in Biblical times,
>>between written and spoken languages? I suspect there was more than we
>>think. The problem for us today is that there were very few present
>>tense prose conversations recorded in Tanakh. I suspect that most of
>>the verbal uses of the participles in Hebrew were very similar to the
>>English verbal participle use, and where English does not use the
>>participle, Biblical Hebrew generally (I need to use a fuzzy factor
>>because the languages are not exactly parallel in their uses) used
>>either the imperfect or perfect.
>>
>>So while I suspect there was more noun/pronoun participle use in
>>spoken language than preserved in Tanakh, I don't think it was near as
>>much as in modern Hebrew.
>>
>>Karl W. Randolph.