Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>]

fred,

On Wed, 2 Feb 2011 15:12:57 -0600, fred burlingame wrote
> 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.

on the contrary! (at least in this case...) let me quote from my previous 
email:

   "some cases where hypothesis 4 is violated may be attributed to
difficulties in maintaining
   this inversion in the narrative".

proverbs 31:15 is precisely one of them. the second half of the sentence
has the following schematic form:

(1)                                "gave:  A to B, and C to D"

or word order

                                     V-: -DO-IO, & -DO-IO

with no Subject present. in general, hebrew (just like english) prefers to put
the Verb BEFOR
the (Direct or Indirect) Object(s), especially so when a Subject word is
missing. even more so,
when the Verb has to serve in parallel more than one Object complex.

conclusion: as the narrator finishe the first half of the sentence, which uses
wyqtol, he finds
it necessary to start the second half with a "w-verb", implying a
second wyqtol form, and violating H4.

> 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;

i dont quite get a and b. can you give some examples?
  
> c. vav prefix reverses tense of the verb;

nobody can object to it, on the behavioral-statistical level. whether this was
INTENDED to be so, i believe it was,
maybe in contrary to a couple of our colleagues. it would indeed be
interesting to examine the exceptional
cases where inversion does not occur.
  
> d. context and actual usage can alter "a" - "c."

agree.
  
> 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.

agree. when you say  "the patriots scored a victory" the reaction in NY and in
Ghaza could be different.

> 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?

right! one textual facet of context is "aspect", i.e. the action observed not
from the narrator's vantage point but the
vantage point of the action's subject. one grammatical facet is my hypothesis
4. i guess there should be many
more facets involved. even the mean of communication.
for example, a newspaper may prefer "the patriot score a victory" in present
tense.

in our case (two past actions in BH) the verb form is seen to react with the
word order, and the word order is
influenced by various textual and grammatical factors.

regards
nir cohen

> 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