Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear James,


We cannot assume that verbs behave in the same way, not even inside 
the Hebrew conjugations or the Hebrew stems, but I think it is 
reasonable to assume that there is a common denominator for the 
prefix forms and suffix forms in Hebrew. In all languages there are 
groups of verbs with similar morphologic characteristics that have 
some similar meanings, although the verbs in one group do not always 
behave in the same way.

Take English as an example. I analyze the present participle as 
representing the imperfective aspect and perfect (not simple past) as 
the perfective aspect. The characteristics of the imperfective aspect 
is that the actions portrayed by it are not completed at reference 
time, and the characteristics of perfect is that the actions are 
completed at reference time, as is seen in 1) and 2). Verbs in the 
two groups have some uniform characteristics- they are even mutually 
exclusive. True, there may be exceptions, but such can be explained 
as exceptions.

I analyze English present as neither an aspect nor a tense, because 
it can have past present and future reference. Further, I analyze 
simple past as past tense. No one would deny that 3) portrays a past 
event.
The form "went" has an intrinsic past reference that is not caused by 
the context. There may be exceptions, but again, they can be 
explained as exceptions.

1) John was reading the book.

2) John has read the book.

3) Liz went home.

In Norwegian there are also different verb groups, such as simple 
past, with an intrinsic past reference. But Norwegian do not have 
aspects.

In New Testament Greek there are similar uniform groups. I analyze 
Greek future as a tense, present as the imperfective aspect (no 
tense), imperfect as a combination of the imperfective aspect and 
past tense, and aorist as the perfective aspect (no tense).  We see 
the same pattern in all the languages: there are verb groups with 
similar morphological characteristics, and the verbs in each group 
have particular temporal or aspectual characteristics. So I think we 
have good reasons to assume that the prefix forms and the suffix 
forms in BH have particular characteristics respectively.

But the big question is whether the prefix  and suffix forms with 
prefixed WAW have different characteristics compared with those 
without WAW. This has been assumed since David Kimhi on statistical 
(pragmatic) grounds and not on semantic grounds. How should we 
approach this question if we wanted to make a scrupulous distinction 
between semantics and pragmatics? We should not count the eyes but 
rather examine the eyes. We must admit that in most instances of 
WAYYIQTOL it is not possible to see the inner constituency of the 
form. In narratives we see consecutive completed events expressed by 
WAYYIQTOLs. But we do not at the outset know whether the past 
reference is an intrinsic property of WAYYIQTOL or whether it is 
caused by the context (any verb forms that are used in narratives 
must per definition have past reference). Further, we do not know 
whether the inner constituensy of the WAYYIQTOLs are similar to the 
YIQTOLs or not. Therefore, we must look for situations that are so 
transparent that we can see the Inner constitueny of the WAYYIQTOLs. 
And I will say that of the about 14,000 WAYYIQTOLs, there are only a 
few hundred situations that are so transparent that we can identify 
the characteristics of WAYYIQTOLs. These transparent situations show 
that that the WAYYIQTOLs have exactly the same properties as the 
YIQTOLS, and that both forms represent the imperfective aspect.

The principal similarities of both forms are that they are:

1) Conative ( attempted actions that were not carried out, she tried to...").

2) Ingressive (the beginning and first part of an action made 
visible, "she began to...)

I give one biblical example to illustrate what I mean by 
transparency, namely, 1 Kings 6:1 (NIV)

In the four hundred and eightieth year after the people of Israel 
came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign 
over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began 
to build  (WAYYIQTOL) the house of the LORD.

Because it took more than one year to build the temple, the WAYYIQTOL 
must have an ingressive force here.


3) Progresseve (events continue with no end in sight, "she continued to...").

4) Resultative events ( the resultative state of an event made visible).

5) Intersection of the WAYYIQTOL by another verb (Like: "While Moses 
was in his tent, Joshua entered the room."

In addition to these characteristics, there are several others 
showing that WAYYIQTOL represents the imperfective aspect.

My point is that first of all we should not look for contexts that 
unambiguously indicate a particular temporal reference, but rather 
look for those transparent situations where we can see a part of the 
inner constituency of the verb form. To get more details, you should 
read my dissertation. Here you will find 2,106 passages with 4,261 
verbs fully analyzed.

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo





> Hi Rolf,
>
> thanks for your summary of semantics versus pragmatics. I think you 
> have adequately shown that you feel that tense is pragmatic. What do 
> you feel to be semantic to a verb form?
>
> Something I think ought to be considered is this. Should we not 
> consider the semantics and pragmatics of each and every single word 
> (that happens to be a verb) individually rather than clumping all 
> verbs together on the assumption that they all behave in the same 
> way?
>
> James Christian
>
> P.S. I appreciate, as a computational linguist, that data sparsity 
> is a problem here
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