Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

[rb] Well, in the above discussion on אני הולך it was the 'Russian' who
>>>>> incorrectly cried 'foul'.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>> [kr] Curious: in what way did the Russian incorrectly cry “foul”? What
>>> was incorrect? Do you have Biblical examples to back up how it was wrong?
>>>
>>
>> [rb] It was the 'Russian' who claimed that in hearing participles in
>> present tense speech he "only heard" modern Hebrew, and that the
>> Subject-Verb word order was "English". The thread showed that those were
>> traits of Biblical Hebrew and were not grounds for criticism. I can't 
>> change
>> BH to be different from these in places where it isn't !
>>
>>
> [kr] Let me refer back to what I wrote on the fourth, “To be serious, when
> I hear people consistently speaking using a syntax where there is a pronoun
> followed by a verb in a participle form in the same way as English uses the
> present tense verb, it sounds like modern Israeli Hebrew which has a tense
> based verbal usage.” We don’t find this pattern in Biblical Hebrew.
>

[rb] Thank you for confirming that you did "cry foul" and intended to
negatively criticize, although in the intervening email you seemed to imply
that you hadn't. In addition, on 3 Oct you wrote "and all I heard was what I
understand as modern Hebrew." without any limitation or knowledgable
discussion of the implied claim that it was not BH. Your comments definitely
came across as a criticism and with not a little 'seemingly knowledgable',
but hollow, suspicion. And now, here, the false statement: "We don't find
this pattern in Biblical Hebrew." Not only do we find the pattern
"pronoun+participle in actual present situations", but it is the default
pattern!  It is the basic way for Jeremiah and Moses to communicate in BH.
As I said before, I can't change BH just because it is roughly congruent to
something in modern Hebrew or English. Your criticism and suspicion turns
out to be the 'highly artificial' item to be avoided. The pattern is the
correct basic BH pattern to use in classroom actual present situations. And
drilling such situations and various verbs 500-1000 times would be wonderful
for students and fairly quickly done in an engaging, spoken environment.


> In fact, not all the times when a pronoun is present does it precede the
> participle, e.g. Numbers 22:22. An individual sentence, yes, but not every
> sentence. This was highly artificial and potentially inaccurate.
>

First of all, no one claims that a default pattern is the only pattern to
use. But a default pattern can be correctly used untold number of times in a
default situation. And a person must understand how and why changes from the
default are being made.

You mention Num 22:22 (it helps if you quote some words for easier
verification).
ויחר אף אלהים כי הולך הוא
Don't you recognize that the word holex in הולך הוא has been pragmatically
marked within the ki clause with a participle? Your quickness to criticize
and quoting this example as 'contrary' leads me to think that you don't
really understand these simple patterns of BH. You are incorrectly quoting
"form" without reference to "meaning". Back to Numbers. The Lord was angry
for his walking. That was a puzzling statement in the context of Num
22:20-22 because the previous verses told him to go with the men. That
becomes a natural context to specially mark a surprising piece of
information. 'Going' was not expected to lead to anger after telling him to
go. 'Going' as a cause of triggering anger is surpising,
contraexpected. The  "participle-Subject" structure is good BH, as a Focus
structure, something that is part of BH syntax as well as many languages
around the world.
The fun part of this more accurate and nuanced reading of BH is that we get
to focus on what the author wants us to focus. In Num 22:22 we get to ponder
why the walking was angering God. The Bible doesn't explain, but it does
mark the fact that the walking needs to have our attention. Perhaps God saw
something wrong in Balaam's motives or in what Balaam wanted to do.
Communication signals show us how to process the information but do not
always supply all of the pieces. For further discussion on the structures,
you are referred to an article available on the BLC website:
http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/verbless-clause-article/

Best of all, such live teaching gives much more rapid input for students,
leading them to a higher level faster, and gives them a more nuanced,
naturally-acquired, starting platform as their language continues to grow
through their readings.

brakot (*barakawata or *bvrvkvwvtv is only the language of Karl, it was
never BH, as was clarified in the other thread.)

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicallanguagecenter.com
Biblical Language Center
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