Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Petr Tomasek <tomasek AT etf.cuni.cz>]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 08:44:03PM +0300, Randall Buth wrote:
> shalom Rolf
> katavta
> >I simply do not understand what you are saying.
> What in the world does it mean that "the T-A-M system of Hebrew is
> continued by induction with the sequential verb structures"? And
> further: "this is not the way Hebrew works"?>
> 
> It was clarifying that some people claim that a sequential tense in
> Hebrew carries forward either the time/or aspect/or mood/ of a
> previous verb.
> But people who might claim that are fundamentally wrong.
> e.g.
> ha-melex halax wayyax et ha-oyyeb.
> 'the king went and hit the enemy.'

Where do You have such a strange syntactic construct?

In the HB / BH I would expect rather something like:

וילך המלך ויך את האויב

or:

ויהי ב-/כ-..... כי הלך המלך ויך את האויב

or even:

והמלך הלך ויך את האויב

> I would claim that wayyax carries its own TAM (perfective/past) and does
> not 'induct' its tense/aspect from halax.
> In speech a person could say:
> ha-melex yatsa we-hikka et ha-oyyeb
> 'the king has gone forth and will hit the enemy'.
> we-hikka does not 'induct' its tense/aspect from yatsa.
> 
> Now ironically, you agree with me that there is no 'induction' of tense
> or aspect from a previous verb,
> but that is because you don't accept that there are sequential 'tenses'
> in BH.
> (Though if I remember, you do consider that the MT has
> sequential 'tenses' as an innovation to the language. We will just
> have to differ on that. I feel comfortably in the main stream of the
> Hebrew language using community for the past 2000 years as
> evidenced by the LXX and targumim.)
> And as a scholar you would probably agree
> that most Semitists view the yaqom//yehi//yashlex יקם יהי ישלך forms
> of the verb as a remnant of a different aspect/tense than the parallel
> forms yaqum//yihye//yashix יקום יהיה ישליך, though you may or may
> not agree with such a group of Semitists.
> 
> braxot
> Randall Buth
> 

-- 
Petr Tomasek <http://www.etf.cuni.cz/~tomasek>
Jabber: butrus AT jabbim.cz

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