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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: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 14:42:56 +0200

Dear list-members,

I continue with examples of )MR.

First I would like to ask, "How did the father of Hebrew grammar. S. R. Driver view the nature of the WAYYIQTOL of )MR? In "A treatise on the Use of Tenses in Hebrew and other Syntactical Questions" (1892:71, 72) he writes (I use asterisks where he has cursive):

"The Imperfect represent action as *nascent*; accordingly, when combined with a conjunction connecting the event introduced by it with a point already reached by the narrative, it represents it as the *continuation* or *development* of the past which came before it. WY)MR is thus properly not *and he said*, but *and he proceeded-to-say."

Driver did not accept that the form "only could be past perfective" as DK has claimed. Driver did not use the modern parameters "deictic center," "event time," and "reference time", but his long and thorough study of BH led him to the mentioned conclusion. Let us now take a look at some examples that Driver also considered (all from NIV):

(1) Exodus 20:1

"God spoke (WAYYIQTOL) all these words, saying (infin.cons.):

(2) Exodus 19:19

"The blare of the horn grew louder and louder. As Moses spoke (YIQTOL), God answered (YIQTOL) him in thunder."


In these verses there are three examples of speak/answer, one as WAYYIQTOL and two as YIQTOLs. The relationship between C and R is seen in all three cases, so the events have past reference. But what about tense/aspect? Is there a semantic difference between the WAYYIQTOL and the YIQTOLs? Such a difference is not visible. But in both instances when the YIQTOLs are used, there is a stated subject before them, and because of this the verbs cannot be expressed as WAYYIQTOLs. If the word order was changed and the subject occurred after the verbs, they would probably have become WAYYIQTOLs. In my dissertation there are scores of examples of this phenomenon: YIQTOLs with past reference are not used to indicate the so-called "durative past," but they are used instead of WAYYIQTOLs when some word element is placed before the verb. This is so because the WAYYIQTOL is nothing but a YIQTOL with a prefixed conjunction, as S. R. Driver said. I will give a few examples below:

3) 1 Kings 21:6

He answered (WAYYIQTOL) her, "Because I said (YIQTOL) to Naboth the
Jezreelite,

4) Judges 9:38

"Then Zebul said (WAYYIQTOL) to him, "Where is your big talk now, you who said (YIQTOL)"

5) 1 KINGS 3:26

"The woman whose son was alive was filled with compassion for her son and said (WAYYIQTOL) to the king, "Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don't kill him!" ΒΆ But the other said (YIQTOL)"


6) HOSHEA 1:10

"In the place where it was said (YIQTOL) to them, 'You are not my people,' they will be called (YIQTOL) 'sons of the living God.'

Here the same YIQTOL verb is used both with past and future reference.

(7) Lamentations 2:15

"Is this the city that was called (YIQTOL) the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?"

Please note the prefixed relative particle that causes gemination of the YOD (2:15) just as does the prefixed conjunction in WAYYIQTOL. No one would say that the gemination after $ has any semantic meaning, but that is what many say regarding the gemination after WAW in WAYYIQTOL.

Examples 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 reveal no difference between YIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL used with past reference. So my challenge to those who belive there is such a difference, is: Please come with the evidence. Do we have examples of YIQTOLs with past reference where we can *see* a different meaning compared with WAYYIQTOL?

Those who do not have any experience in analyzing verbs in a dead language may wonder what factors that can help us see the inner constituency of a verb form, i.e., what the author wants to make visible by using that form. One factor is a knowledge of the world. This knowledge has no bearing on lexicon, grammar, and syntax, so it does not generate any new linguistic meaning. But it can help us see the aspect of a verb (Another factor may be different adverbials). Please look at 8) and 9) below.


8) 1 Kings 6:1

"In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build (WAYYIQTOL) the temple of the LORD."

9) Constructed example

"In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of Egypt, Solomon built (WAYYIQTOL) a house for his queen."

In 9) we do not know how long it took to build the house for the queen, so the relationship between E and R is invisible, and we do not know whether the beginning of the action, the progressive action, or the action including its end is what the author wanted to make visible. But 8) is different, because we know that it took many years to build the temple. Therefore, the force of the WAYYIQTOL is ingressive, i.e., the beginning and the small part of the action that was performed that year is made visible. This is an imperfective property.

The demand of DK to show that the WAYYIQTOL form of )MR "is consistently imperfective throughout the corpus" is of course impossible, because there are so few examples of verbs where we can see the relation between E and R. Such a demand is tantamount to saying that God is not omnipotent, because he cannot make a stone that he is not able to carry."

But we may sum up the situation in the following way:

1) The past reference of so many WAYYIQTOLs does not tell us anything about their aspect (cf. Comrie).

2) There is absolutely no reason why the WAY-element in WAYYIQTOL should be viewed as a semantic element changing the force of the form compared with the force of the YIQTOL - because the element can be phonetically explained (cf. the prefixed $ in Lamentations 2:15).

3) In no other Semitic language do a prefixed element to a verb conjugation change its meaning to the very opposite of the meaning without the element. To the best of my knowledge, this is not the case in any other living or dead language.

4) In Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Akkadian, the same conjugations can be used with past, present, and future reference, just as in Hebrew.

5) As shown above, the YIQTOL form can be used with exactly the same meaning as the WAYYITOL form; and the choice of form depends on the word order, whether there is a word element before the verb or not.

Therefore we may turn the question around. I do not ask for a demonstration of all WAYYIQTOLs of )MR are perfective. But my question is: What is the evidence that the verb form in Genesis 12:1 is perfective? And what is the definition of "perfective"?


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo












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