Biblical Hebrew Forum

[fred burlingame <tensorpath AT gmail.com>]

Hello Nir:

Thanks for taking the time to develop and present a nice hypothesis. You
have thought it out well.

I offer the following response.

Does proverbs 31:15 present an exception to the hypothesis, both as to tense
and repetition of verb forms?

Perhaps the masoretic text resists rules.

Perhaps only a general rule can be assigned in this instance, and subject
to one or two exceptions:

a. pronoun suffixed verbs encode past tense;

b. pronoun prefixed verbs encode future tense;

c. vav prefix reverses tense of the verb; and

d. context and actual usage can alter "a" - "c."

I observe by way of comparison the following. One, of numerous
potential meanings of a single word (including
opposite potential meanings), frequently becomes expressed only by actual
usage. Coud not verb forms be viewed in a similar fashion? The verb form
enjoys an inherent bias towards a particular tense. But the actual tense of
the verb form only becomes known when put to use in a specific context?

regards,

fred burlingame
On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 1:32 PM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. 
<nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>wrote:

> dear rolf, paul, fred, arnaud,
>
> i agree with arnaud. the idea of aspect is most interesting. however,
> looking
> at any
> chapter of the tanakh, it shows NO correlation WHATEVER with the
> distribution
> of the
> two forms, qatal and wayiqtol,
>
>                      WITHIN A GIVEN SENTENCE!!!
>
> (not in the entire text). there must be a much simpler technical
> explanation
> here.
> here it comes, fred!
>
> ----------------
>
> let us just consider sentences which are not compound, with time, tense,
> aspect all being equal,
> namely, past. also, with just two actions, clearly in the past. we have
> thousands of such
> sentences in the torah. maybe pere's chapter 2sam 17 can be used here.
>
> FACT 1: each half of the sentence may start with a verb or non-verb.
>
> FACT 2: each sentence (whenever possible) starts with a w-. this is the
> standasrd past narrative
> form of BH. let us restrict our attention to such sentences.
>
> COROLLARY 3: the verb is wayqtol if it comes first (following the w-),
> qatal
> otherwise (not following w-).
>
> HYPOTHESIS 4: each of the forms (qatal, yqtol) cannot occur twice in the
> same
> sentence. (this is what i
> described as poetic style).
>
>   hypothesis 4 works well in practice, although it should be ammended in
> some
> cases. one case is analyzed below.
>
> COROLLARY 5: each sentence of the type described above should be of one of
> the
> following two forms:
>
> CASE 1) first half starts with a verb, second half .... not.
>        first verb is wyqtol, second verb is qatal (or other forms such as
> infinitive).
>
> CASE 2) first half does not start with a verb, second half .....yes.
>        first verb is qatal, second is wayqtol.
>
> so we see that in most cases the SVO and VSO order of the second half will
> be
> dependent, via inversion,
> on the first half. some cases where hypothesis 4 is violated may be
> attributed
> to difficulties in
> maintaining this inversion in the narrative.
>
> the only enigma left is to understand how the word order of the first half
> is
> chosen. this issue
> mixes both grammar and context, and would be beyond my capacity to describe
> here.
>
> i believe that this simple mechanical explanation fits the text much better
> than the aspect
> assumption, in the sense i specified, i.e. WITHIN EACH ISOLATED, SIMPLE
> SENTENCE. clearly, in more
> complicated sentences, where aspect, tense and time may diverge, the more
> complicated grammatical
> theories may be helpful.
>
> nir cohen
>
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>