Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>]

In October of 2003 this subject was up for discussion and consisted of a
thread contributed by Ken Penner, Peter Kirk and Dr. Athas.  It may be
useful to check out the archive.  I don't think George will mind if I copy
his contribution to that thread below.  Of course debate about the waw
consecutive will continue.
*********************************************
George Athas 10-15-2003:

Two things to mention in this debate.

Firstly, the root HYH is often used as a macro-syntactic marker to give
structure to a narrative. It does not necessarily imply continuation, but
rather
is a recognised 'form' (in the technical sense of the word) for delineating
the
beginning of a unit (or sub-unit) within a narrative.

Secondly, the waw-consecutive form is not so much "continuation" as it is
"narrative momentum". The way I often teach it to students is to use two
analogies:


Waw Consecutive in Narrative Hebrew Narrative

1. Waw-Consecutive forms are like a green light. When you see them, the
narrative is moving along. When you encounter Perfect forms, you have a red
light; you're meant to stop and look around (usually behind you) and take in
the
'road conditions' of the narrative; it supplies you with extra info.

2. Verbs are like camera angles and movements in a movie. A Waw-consecutive
form
means the camera is moving along with the characters; the background is
unimportant. A Perfect form, however, sees the camera stationary, giving you
time to take in some of the background.


Most biblical books begin with a "red light" or a "stationary camera" -- ie,
not
a waw-consecutive -- allowing you to get your bearings in the narrative.
However, Joshua simply gets off to a flying start. There is no direct
"continuation", though in terms of canonical story, yes it does come after
the
Torah. However, the waw-consecutive at the start of Joshua is not a
deliberate
"continuation" of the Torah, but rather a narrative that has momentum right
from
the start. The vehicle is already moving, so to speak; there is no need to
start
the engine or even let it idle for a while. We simply hop onto a moving
narrative.


Best regards,

GEORGE ATHAS
Lecturer of Biblical Languages
Southern Cross College
Sydney, Australia

Jack Kilmon
San Antonio, TX


--------------------------------------------------
From: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2010 9:33 AM
To: "Randall Buth" <randallbuth AT gmail.com>
Cc: "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Emerging consensus (and paedogogy) on "Waw 
Consecutive" PSS

> Dear Randall:
>
> On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 12:05 AM, Randall Buth 
> <randallbuth AT gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 9:23 PM, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > I have never heard of the term T-A-M before, so can you explain it?
> >
> > It is linguistic notation for "tense-aspect-mood" and often used in
> > comparative discussions where languages have divergent or blurred TAM
> > systems. It recognizes that languages often have forms and categories
> > in the verb system where tense-aspect-mood parameters cannot be easily
> > or neatly separated in the morphology. And it allows for neutral
> > discussion of systems where the parameters may be difficult to define,
> > or may differ with different theoretical assumptions/definitions.
>
> What follows is my trying to understand what you wrote.
>
> In other words, this is a tool used in linguistic analysis for comparative
> linguistics, to see how verbal usage in different languages differ, and as 
> a
> tool to help with translation? How does this work when we limit the
> discussion internal to Biblical Hebrew itself?
>
> > > As far as Judges 13:3, the waws indicate a continuation of the 
> > > narration,
> > > just as I indicated.
> >
> >
> > So you claim that extra words mean that the narration is continuing.
> > (And by narration you are including the quoted speech, here, which is
> > fine.)
> > My responses had assumed more than tautology in your response,
> > especially since one of the common 'explanations' ('first [and second]
> > year lies') is that the T-A-M system of Hebrew is continued by
> > induction with the sequential verb structures. Which is not how Hebrew
> > works. Not only does that 'inducted TAM' not fit the data, as
> > mentioned, but it doesn't explain why Hebrew would have two sequential
> > structures for a single process of induction. The two structures carry
> > different TAM. Perhaps we're agreed on this.
> >
> > In trying to understand your response, I found the following site:
>
> http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/contents.htm
>
> Tense—I think we agree that Biblical Hebrew verbal morphology does not
> convey tense. At least that’s how I also understand the research mentioned
> that led to Dr. Furuli’s dissertation.
>
> Aspect—as I understand the above site’s explanation, is a subset of tense,
> hence irrelevant to Biblical Hebrew.
>
> Mood—?? I don’t understand the above site’s explanation. All I can say for
> certain is that it does not appear to be the same as when I use the term
> “mood”.
>
> How does this relate to the question?
>
> As I understand the original question, it was on how to explain the
> waw-conversive. My response was that there is enough disagreement among
> scholars and among members of this group that the only thing to say for
> certain is that the waw indicates a continuation. In other words, I made a
> statement that shows the limits to what we as a group agree on.
>
> Karl W. Randolph.
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