Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rolf" <rolf.furuli AT sf-nett.no>]

Dear Ruth,

 See my comments below.

Tirsdag 28. Mai 2013 07:04 CEST skrev Ruth Mathys <ruth_mathys AT sil.org>:

> > The patterns which are clear in Proverbs 31:10­31 can be applied to the 
> > rest
> > of Tanakh and still make sense, whereas your model doesn¹t fit that 
> > passage.
> > In that passage, all the verbs are used exactly the same, as far as your 
> > model
> > is concerned, a model according to European languages. They are with one
> > exception indefinite, present tense, imperfective aspect, indicative 
> > mood; the
> > one exception is subjunctive mood.
>
> I find this last sentence confusing.  Following the thread of Karl's
> argument, I take him to mean that the situation being described in Prov
> 31:10-31 is one that has present-time reference ('present tense'), is being
> viewed in an open-ended way ('imperfective aspect') and is
> proverbial/generic rather than referring to a specific individual
> ('indefinite').
>
> Part of the problem is using terms like 'indicative mood' to talk about the
> real-world (or hypothetical-world) situation being described, when in fact
> these terms can only properly be used to describe language forms.  There is
> no such thing as an 'indicative' situation, only an indicative verb form or
> construction.  In other words, the 'indicativeness' exists entirely within
> the sentence used to describe the situation.  It isn't a property of the
> situation itself.  Actually, this passage even begins with a rhetorical
> question, so even the first verb form probably isn't indicative (if that is
> even a relevant category for the Hebrew verb system).  The same is true for
> perfective vs imperfective aspect.  Even when a situation lends itself to
> being described by a particular form (e.g. perfective aspect is the default
> option for describing past time), the speaker usually has the option of
> choosing a different form to communicate a specific shade of meaning.  In
> English, the answer to "What did you do?" can be "I didn't do anything" or
> "I haven't done anything" or even "I wasn't doing anything" depending on the
> slant that the speaker wants to put on the situation.
>
> It's true that terms like 'present tense' often are used rather
> indiscriminately.  It is sometimes used to refer to a morphological form,
> and sometimes to the temporal reference of the verb.  I wish there were
> standardised terms to keep the two concepts distinct, but we're not there
> yet.

You are correct when you find the last sentence of your quote confusing. It 
would have been enough to say that there is no temporal difference between 
the verbs, and the reference of all the verbs is present. The term 
"indicative" is a proper term for Hebrew.
>
> Anyway, so I don't think it's legitimate to say that all the verbs are
> "indefinite, present tense, imperfective aspect, indicative mood".  It is
> only legitimate to list the different verb *forms* used (some are yiqtol,
> some are qatal, some are wayyiqtol, etc.), give an *opinion* about the
> overall situation being referred to (a generic description of a generic
> ideal woman) and then systematically relate the various verb forms to that
> situation.
>
> The argument seems to be that since the situation is generic and
> present-time (or timeless?), the variation of verb forms must be due to
> something other than tense or aspect.  The trick is to then formulate a
> positive explanation of the variation -- what are the different meanings
> that the writer can evoke (using alternative verb forms) to describe the
> same general situation?

Whereas the term "generic" is a useful linguistic term, I would not have used 
it in this context, because the use of terms from discourse analysis and 
different classifications can disturb the analyses of the verbs.

 The argument is not that the variation of the verb forms must be due to 
something other than tense and aspect. The argument is that because all the 
verb forms can be used with the same present reference, none of them can 
represent grammaticalization of location in time (=tense). These verbs 
together with scores upon scores of other verbs show that Classical Hebrew 
does not have tenses. They also show that if these verbs are aspects, aspects 
are not mutually exclusive.

>
> In any case, why assume that Prov 31:10-31 is generic?  John A. Cook in
> "Genericity, Tense, and Verbal Patterns in the Sentence Literature of
> Proverbs" (sorry, no idea of the complete reference) argues that "... qatal
> along with the few examples of wayyiqtol in Proverbs may portray past tense
> anecdotes from which the reader is left to extract a general maxim".
> Instead of making an a priori decision about the situation being described
> by a particular passage and then trying to read the verb forms based on that
> decision, it is just as valid to try assigning particular values to each
> verb form and then see if the passage can be read meaningfully (is there a
> genre we haven't considered yet?).

Sorry, Ruth, but this paragraph is not satisfactory. I will illustrate the 
issue this way:  In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s  the common belief was that 
WAYIQTOL was a preterite. Several scholars presented WAYYIQTOLs with non-past 
meaning, and at last a list of 125 such WAYYIQTOLs circulated. The Norwegian 
scholar H. Birkeland and F. Blake both believed that WAYYIQTOL  was a 
preterit. How did they explain the 125 counterexamples? Blake claimed that 
most of the examples were wrongly pointed and were not WAYYIQTOLs (F.R. 
Blake, "A Resurvey of Hebrew Tenses" 1951), whereas Birkeland claimed that 
they were correctly pointed, but that they did not have non-past 
reference—and his  arguments in favor of this were extremely forced( H. 
Birkeland, Ist das hebräische Imperfectum konsekutiv ein Präteritum?" Acta 
Orient XIII, 1935, pp. 1-34). The answer was given before the forms were 
analyzed by these scholars. By his MAY-proposition, J.A. Cook can be placed 
in the same category as the two mentioned scholars. His view is that 
WAYYIQTOL basically signals simple past, and counter examples are explained 
away; her by his MAY-explanation. He has in fact taken an a priori decision.

What we need to do to understand Hebrew verbs, is to study ALL the verbs of 
the Tanakh. And if a definition or description of a verb form seems to 
emerge, it is important to collect and study all the counter examples in 
order to see if the supposed definition will stand.

At last I have the following question: How will you explain the occurrences 
of the YIQTOLs and WAYYIQTOLs in Psalm 18?



Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
Stavern
Norway







>
> Ruth Mathys
>
>
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