Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

karl,

i am not a professional linguist, so pls take my opinion with a grain of salt.
i got interested in the BH tensing more than half a year 
ago after b-hebrew discussions involving, initially, a question of fred 
burlingam and 
eventually discussions involving other members such as buth, luyt, furuli, 
fried etc. initially 
i made some naive remarks on the subject, which had a grain of truth, and i 
pretend to report
to b-hebrew on some less naive interesting findings in the near future.

there is much debate on whether BH is tense or aspect prominent, with ardent
supporters on both sides. the truth is that both are correct and incorrect at 
the same time.

however, after exilic times BH tensing changed drastically, by losing the two 
prefix forms
weqatal and wayiqtol, and became tense based. then it became just like 
aramaic. probably
this was preceded by aramaic pressure during many centuries of war and 
coexistence. maybe hebrew 
spoken dialect was already converging towards aramaic tensing in pre-exilic 
times, but this was never
verified. whether they really stopped speaking hebrew, well, this was 
heatedlydebated on b-hebrew 
(about half a year ago?).although hebrew syntax converged to aramaic syntax, 
word borrowing from 
aramaic to hebrew is only modest and hebrew essentially maintained its 
lexicon, etymology and 
ways of expression.

canaanite/phoenician tensing is somewhat different, and is much based on 
aspect, though little compatible 
with BH tensing. there is one site on youtube which teaches canaanite verb 
grammar.  apparently
in an effort to revive the language, mainly in lebanon.

here is some relevant reading on BH tensing if you are interested:

pj gentry. the system of the finite verbs in classical BH. hebrew studies 
journal 1998. an excellent survey.

bk waltke-m o'connor have an excellent book on hebrew syntax which contains a 
lot of insight and examples
on the correct interpretation of verb forms. an introd to BH syntax. 
eisenbrauns 1990.

j joosten, do the finite verbal forms in BH express aspect? janes 29:49-70 
2002   (the question is rhetoric!)

ja cook, the finite verb form in BH do express aspect. janes 30, 21-35. 

those who put the problem in this way use the most primitive definitions of 
tense and aspect as basis
for discussion, and obtain the most bizarre answers, since each language 
creates its own definitions for
tense and, especially, aspect. some researchers like furuli, rainey, buth, 
shulman,niccacci, revell use 
more sophisticated definitions for aspect, or consider other factors (mood, 
syntax, discourse) and then 
tend to reject both hypotheses.

one source for the "primitive theory" of tense and aspect in typology is:
jl bybee, o dahl, the creation of tense and aspect in the languages of the 
world. studies in language 13:83-?? 1989

a conjectured synchronic explanation for the prefix forms in BH within the NW 
semitic block can be found in:

j huehnergard, early hebrew prefix-conjugations (i have no further details), 
but also see: 
ms smith, the origin and devel'pt of thewaw-consecutive. harvard semitic 
studies 39 atlanta scholars press 1991.

best
nir

On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:03:24 -0700, K Randolph wrote
> Nir:
> 
> Thanks for the explanation.
> 
> On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br> 
> wrote:
> karl,
> 
> the talmudic, medieval and modern hebrew dialects are all tense-based,
> and so is aramaic. it would be more natural to assume an
> aramaic influence on modern hebrew, as opposed to a greek one.
> 
> 
> I’ll have to watch for that the next time I read Daniel and Ezra. I was 
> never taught Aramaic other than that it has its grammatical forms.
> 
> I was told that the modern common belief that Biblical Hebrew conjugated 
> for aspect was because of comparing it to other Semitic languages that were 
> conjugated for aspect. But if Aramaic is tense based, then I wonder what I 
> was told comes from.
> in fact, aramaic and talmudic hebrew admit a one-to-one
> correspondence in the phoneme, lexical, grammatical and syntax levels,
> to the extent that i would call talmudic hebrew a word-for-word
> transliterated aramaic dialect (you can check it, for example,
> on the book of daniel). also, the tensing using past, present,
> future and auxiliary verb hyh/hwh are basically equal.
> 
> That Talmudic Hebrew would be basically an Aramaic dialect indicates that 
> Hebrew was not a natively spoken language during the Talmudic era. There 
> are indications already in the post-Babylonian Exile Biblical books that 
> Biblical Hebrew had ceased to be spoken as a natively spoken language
>   this
> cannot be said about hebrew (or aramaic) vs any european language.
> 
> 
> Thanks for your explanation, which indicates that the switch to tense based 
> conjugations was caused by exposure to a tense based conjugated Semitic 
> language, earlier than the exposure to tense conjugated European languages. 
> nir cohen
> 
> >>> Hence, looking not at the forms but at the actions that underlie the 
> >>> forms,
> I see the grammar of modern Israeli Hebrew to be a European language
> grammar, very different from the grammar of Biblical Hebrew. That is why I
> consider modern Israeli Hebrew to be a modern European language.
> 
> Where did the belief that Biblical Hebrew conjugated for aspect come from?
> 
> Karl W. Randolph.

-- 
Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org) 
On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:03:24 -0700, K Randolph wrote
> Nir:
> 
> Thanks for the explanation.
> 
> On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br> 
> wrote:
> karl,
> 
> the talmudic, medieval and modern hebrew dialects are all tense-based,
> and so is aramaic. it would be more natural to assume an
> aramaic influence on modern hebrew, as opposed to a greek one.
> 
> 
> I’ll have to watch for that the next time I read Daniel and Ezra. I was 
> never taught Aramaic other than that it has its grammatical forms.
> 
> I was told that the modern common belief that Biblical Hebrew conjugated 
> for aspect was because of comparing it to other Semitic languages that were 
> conjugated for aspect. But if Aramaic is tense based, then I wonder what I 
> was told comes from.
> in fact, aramaic and talmudic hebrew admit a one-to-one
> correspondence in the phoneme, lexical, grammatical and syntax levels,
> to the extent that i would call talmudic hebrew a word-for-word
> transliterated aramaic dialect (you can check it, for example,
> on the book of daniel). also, the tensing using past, present,
> future and auxiliary verb hyh/hwh are basically equal.
> 
> That Talmudic Hebrew would be basically an Aramaic dialect indicates that 
> Hebrew was not a natively spoken language during the Talmudic era. There 
> are indications already in the post-Babylonian Exile Biblical books that 
> Biblical Hebrew had ceased to be spoken as a natively spoken language
>   this
> cannot be said about hebrew (or aramaic) vs any european language.
> 
> 
> Thanks for your explanation, which indicates that the switch to tense based 
> conjugations was caused by exposure to a tense based conjugated Semitic 
> language, earlier than the exposure to tense conjugated European languages. 
> nir cohen
> 
> >>> Hence, looking not at the forms but at the actions that underlie the 
> >>> forms,
> I see the grammar of modern Israeli Hebrew to be a European language
> grammar, very different from the grammar of Biblical Hebrew. That is why I
> consider modern Israeli Hebrew to be a modern European language.
> 
> Where did the belief that Biblical Hebrew conjugated for aspect come from?
> 
> Karl W. Randolph.

-- 
Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)