Biblical Hebrew Forum

[fred burlingame <tensorpath AT gmail.com>]

Hello Nir;

Thanks for your comments. Your observations and amusing examples about
context, I fully concur.

The rules that I distilled in my prior post, resulted from the comments I
hear here ....

But if you would like to hear my personal opinion about these two verb
forms, I can only say: "I call it like I see it."

You asked for specific examples.

Let's take 1 Samuel 1:5.

a. first verb; prefixed form; yi-ten, יתן . The context of that verb
instructs me to read "he gave."

b. second verb; suffixed form; ah-hev; אהב . The context of that verb
instructs me to read: "he loved."

c. third verb; suffixed form; sa-gar; סגר . The context of that verb
instructs me to read "he closed."

Or Isaiah 65:17.

a. last verb; prefixed form; ta-ah-le-na; תעלינה . The context of that verb
instructs me to read "they shall ascend."

b. second to last verb; prefixed form; ti-za-har-na; תזכרנה . The context of
that verb instructs me to read "they shall be remembered."

Perhaps a lot more levels of meaning were encoded into these words. I don't
know. I have not thought about that.

i simply would like to get straight in my mind ... the plain and visible
meaning first. ... and foremost.

And for me, where tension arises between context on the one hand; and a rule
of tense or aspect about verb form
on other; .... I defer to context; and let context rule the day. .... :)


regards,

fred burlingame
On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 12:57 PM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. 
<nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>wrote:

> 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
>
> >