Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Randall:

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 3:36 AM, Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com> wrote:

> [[>> is RB]]
> [[> is KR]]
> ...
>
> > My understanding is ... that you do not question the main
> > themes of the experts who taught you. ...
>
> Your understanding is in obvious error.


That’s why I said it is “my understanding”, yet in your denial you seem to
back up my understanding.


> And bringing up personal
> perceptions of others is irrelevant to the data.
>

It is an attempt to understand your presentation of the data, which is why I
then give you an opportunity to clarify and/or deny a misunderstanding.


> You may need to pay closer attention to what I say.
> You might like the blog I mentioned last week.
>
> http://alefandomega.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-history-of-hebrew-yiqtol-and-hebrew.html
> pointing out that yiqtol in a future context does NOT mark
> aspect.


Why beat that dead horse when we both agree on it? Why bring it up when I
have already denied that the inflections indicate aspect?

As I understood his usage, TAM really means tense (as in time), aspect (as
in time) and mood.

(An aside, he shows a usual layman’s misunderstanding of physics (according
to physicist relatives and friends): the concept that light is sometimes a
wave, sometimes a particle, is one merely of mathematical convenience, not a
description of light itself. It’s a good thing that we don’t need to
understand it before we use it.)


> That is a view that I've held for about 36 years,
> and is/was definitely not the way most in the field talk.
>

In other words, if I read this correctly, most Biblical Hebrew professors
still believe that the qatal and yiqtol inflections signify time based
concepts, such as tense and/or aspect?

> …
> And these personal discussions are truly irrelevant, maybe a
> smokescreen.
> If I met someone who read a first-year Arabic grammar and
> then studied an unvocalized Quran with an analytical lexicon
> umpteen number of times,


How many times do I have to say that it has been decades since I last looked
at an analytical lexicon? How can I be more clear on this?


>  >> The data on le-haxin להכין showed non-predictable collocations
> >> with 'food' in Biblical Hebrew.
> >
> > I think studies in languages should not be predictive, rather
> descriptive.
>
> Strange dichotomy. Maybe you misunderstand 'predict'.
> Predictions are usually considered good ways of testing theories.
>

Not necessary in descriptions. Or are you trying to go beyond description?

>
> …
>
> e.g., by etymology someone might think that a qedesha might be
> any holy thing [it is a 'cult prostitute']. I would claim that the root
> does not predict the specific meaning that the word ended up with,
> instead we can take the noun and see where it came from,
> but that is a noun and gets us offtrack. (I read your response
> and 'nagid' before writing this response.)
>

This is an example of etymology, not inflection.

>
> > Looking at the meaning of the word, “to establish, in the sense of
> setting
> > up, making firm, trustworthy”, do the following fit the meaning of the
> > word?
> >> (cf. Gn 43.16,
> > Yep, without going into the details of how the meal was established, set
> > up.
>
> And why didn't you do a pure application of your hif`il theory:
> 'to CAUSE the food to ESTABLISH . . .'?
>

Is that a hiphil, or a hophal? Doesn’t the lack of the medial yod mean
anything?

…
> As mentioned, your starting point was off,
> since the root would not be 'establish' but more like
> 'be stable, positioned unwavering, be firm'.


Where do you get that definition? That’s not the definition I find when
making a descriptive definition based on looking up all its uses in Tanakh,
using a concordance.


> Then remember that
> you must hif`ilize the root starting point before getting  'establish'.
> So that your system predicts a hif`il 'stabilize, make firm.'
> When you are done with that and recognize that both le-konen and
> le-hakin can refer to 'founding/establishing kingdoms', you will want
> to take note that le-konen is never used with preparing food. That
> should go into the equation, too.
>

This is the problem when defining according to semantic fields: you lose
sight of the fact that the underlying action is the same.

>
> …
> >> But how do you know and show that this "inflectional view" is not the
> >> influence of 'first year pedagogy' (first year lies, as you
> >> sometimes say) and heavy reliance on an analytical lexicon in a
> >> foreign language?
> >>
> >> There is a simple way to test.
> >> See what your predictions produce, and then
> >> compare the predictions to attested occurrences.
> >
> > I try not to predict, rather just explain. Predictions can lock one into
> > patterns that turn out to be wrong. Explanations can be constantly
> updated
> > as new data is entered.
>
> You haven't understood this yet. You are predicting every time you
> use your pi``el and hif`il "inflexional grammar". And you haven't been
> noticing all of the natural predictions that the language has chosen
> not to use as words, like with higgid below. It is the 'inflexional
> grammar'
> that is already locking you into wrong patterns.
> Smell the coffee, look in mirror. Get free of those 'locked patterns'.
>

As a descriptive tool, I have found that it works very well.

For example, in looking up verbs that appear in both qal and hiphil, in
almost every case, when I asked what was the relationship between the qal
and hiphil uses of the verb, it is clear from context and usage that the
hiphil is a causative of the qal. That is descriptive, not predictive.

It becomes predictive when I apply the patterns seen in other verbs to verbs
which do not have the qal inflection, but even there, there usually are
enough clues to back up the predictions. So that way it usually is still
descriptive.

>
> > If we write in BH, we could not carry on this discussion. BH does not
> have
> > technical grammatical terms, like verb, noun, inflection, tense, aspect,
> > mood, and so forth. Did it have those terms, but they were not recorded
> in
> > the Bible? We don’t know.
>
> לא יכלת לכתב על זה ?
>

Don’t you know how to write a question in Biblical Hebrew?


>  אם תחפץ אתן לך מלים כמו שֵם ופֹעַל. אם לא, אל תדבר על 'שם' או 'פעל'.
>

This makes no sense in Biblical Hebrew. You are using words in ways that are
never found in Tanakh. Might be later Hebrew, but as you already know, I
don’t know those cognate languages.


> דבר על דברים מסביבותיהן.
>

Sorry, feels wrong. Check that last word.


> כי פה יוכלו כל מורינו לבאר את הכתובים בשפת כנען. ואנחנו מוסיפים מלים
>

“בשפת כנען” you mean Aramaic, the language spoken in Canaan when that
prophesy was fulfilled? After all, there was a word at that time for Hebrew
if Hebrew were meant.

Again, this sentence does not feel right.


> מועילות כמו 'עברית' 'מקרא' 'תנ"ך' 'שם' 'פעל' 'הפעיל' ואחרות. וגם אינם פחדים
> מעשות שגיות כי כלם יודעים כי ככה מצליחים בשפה.
>
> …>
> > Let’s look at another very common verb, X+), which has the basic meaning
> of
> > “to err, miss the target”. Yet, only once is this clearly the meaning in
> > Tanakh. Almost every other case it refers to a moral missing the mark,
> > usually translated as “sin”. But on the street, which would have been the
> > more common use?
>
> Actually, it is the hif`il le-haHTi' that means 'to miss the target',
> though
> some qal may mean 'miss out, lack'.
>

Judges 20:16 a qal yiqtol. ולא יחטא

>
>
> … And synonyms for 'to err, be guilty' cannot be pi``elized
> into meaning 'to purify'. Neither a non-existant *ti``a תִעה,
> nor *Ti``a טִעה, nor *shiggeg שגג, nor *shigga ,שגה nor *ishem
> אשם mean purify, nor would they be expected to be, nor did they
> mean such in the HB or in the whole history of language that you
> haven't read.
>

We have no written history pre-Tanakh, and post Tanakh is irrelevant to
Biblical Hebrew, because it changed.

While reading Tanakh this morning, I came across Ezekiel 42:13 where the
noun )$M referred to a sacrifice to make amends for guilt, so that concept
is there. If you want, I can make a more detailed study of this term.

>
>
> > So similarly for NGD, the limited literature that is Tanakh cannot rule
> out
> > other uses of either a qal, niphal or other binyan, nor even other uses
> of
> > the hiphil.
>
> So you choose zero out of 369 in order to justify your 'first year
> grammar'?


Concerning the verb NGD. I didn’t give a detailed answer right away because
I was away from my study materials.


Is the verb always a hiphil? What about the many times it is written without
a medial yod? Sure, many of those times they are hophals, the passive form
of hiphil (e.g. Genesis 48:2, Judges 4:12, 9:7, 42, 1 Samuel 3:13, 17:31,
18:20), with the same basic meaning, but that puts to lie the claim that
they are all hiphils. And I wonder how many of the other times that the
medial yod is missing that they really are piels or puals?


In looking at only about a third of the cases where NGD is used as a verb, I
find a few cases where it can be questioned whether or not it always refers
to reporting. This search has also caused me to revise slightly my
understanding of the verb, to a more activist meaning, namely more of “to go
before” more than “to be before”, and where there is an object, “to set
before”. (Of course, don’t expect a literal translation to make good
English.)


Genesis 14:13 “a survivor came and went before Abram”

Genesis 45:26 “They went before their father saying…”

Genesis 47:1 “Joseph came and went before pharaoh and said…”

Numbers 11:27 “And a young man ran and went before Moses and said…”

Deuteronomy 26:3 “And you will come unto the priest who will be in those
days and you will say unto him, ‘I am caused to come before YHWH your God
today, because I came unto the land…’”

Judges 14:2 “And he ascended and went before his father and his mother and
he said, …”

1 Samuel 14:43 “…and Jonathan stood before him and said…”

1 Samuel 18:24 “And Saul’s servants went before him saying, …”




> Why not say le-haggid means 'to communicate',
> and be done with it?


This is translation, not with a goal of understanding Biblical Hebrew.
Translation is often not literal. And I agree with you, were I to translate
these examples, most likely I would make a non-literal translations because
they communicate better.


> If you say that it "really" means 'to put a
> thing in front of something', this what is called the etymological
> fallacy,


That is, if you believe it is etymology, and not inflection. If it is
inflection, then it is not the etymological error. Pretty much by
definition.


>
> blessings
> Randall
>
>
> --
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicalulpan.org
> randallbuth AT gmail.com
> Biblical Language Center
> Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
>

Karl W. Randolph.