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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs
  • Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:51:12 +0200

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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