Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Nir:

On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 9:42 AM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br> wrote:

karl,

the files are too big for me to handle. is there anywhere else where i could
post them which would be more convenient? e.g. a site dedicated to linguistics?

Right off the bat I don’t know of any, do any of the other readers out there have any suggestions? 

as to arguments, i will be glad to discuss them, although it might take some time.

Time is what I thought a discussion board has in spades, if utilized wisely. 

below i describe one of them which i consider central. let me start with the
observation (i am sure you will agree) that predictions based on TAM
(tense-aspect-mood) often fail to explain the BH verb form.

TAM was a dead idea to me long before Randall Buth taught me the acronym. It’s European language centered, and has no place in Biblical Hebrew grammar.

 

in jer. 2:2 we find

הלך וקראת...זכרתי לך

why is וקראת weqatal and not yiqtol?

What I’ve noticed is that the imperative idea can be written with the imperative form, the Yiqtol (as in Exodus 20) and the weQatal. Why these three? I don’t know. Why not a Qatal? I haven’t found one yet. Why is one used in one situation and not another? Again I don’t know. This is imperative use.

 

why is זכרתי qatal and not wayiqtol?

Present tense continuous indicative use, possibly the most common use found in Tanakh for recorded conversations where action at the same time as speech is indicated.

This is a quote of what YHWH wished Jeremiah to convey, with זכרתי being the primary verb of the quote.

of course, there are MANY answers: e.g. in וקראת (i) HIPUX, (ii) CONSECUTIVE,
(iii) INDUCTIVE, (iv) IRREALIS, (v) INDIRECT VOLITIVE (vi) FOREGROUND etc.
for זכרתי it is (i) PAST, (ii) PERFECT, (iii) PERFECTIVE, (iv) PLUPERFECT,
(v) CLAUSE-INITIAL, (vi) BACKGROUND (is it indeed?). you may pick your choice.

but then my question is: is there any alternative here? really, there is none.

Could you please explain your answer here. Why “none”?

 

the waw in וקראת
is there for SYNTACTIC reasons, and cannot just disappear. and the waw in זכרתי is
simply not there, and cannot just appear (plus the problem of ellipsis).

so, syntax exerts a veto over the verb forms, sometimes. really, syntax acts on the verb form the same way that syllables act on, say, the phoneme ב ("in"): change its niqud according to the needs. the "basic rule" is schwa/patax, but often we find something else.

namely, in the linguistic hierarchy, from the smallest (say, phoneme) to the largest (say, sentence), each hierarchy exerts pressures on the lower hierarchy, which result in "changing
the laws" in some cases. in case of the verb form, this pressure comes from word order and  conjunctiveness/co(sub)ordination.
 
now,וילכו אחרי ההבל (ibid:5) is somewhat different, since there is a real alternative: ואחרי ההבל הלכו .

Why the alternative not ואחרי ההבל ילכו as in the example of Proverbs 31:11, 14, 18, 27, 30 just as one example?

 

although, even here syntax exerts a "gentle" pressure by adjoining the verb with the indirect preposition, indicating wayiqtol as the correct verb form. this could have been changed by fronting, but only "for a very good reason" (emphasis? discontinuity?  what are the rules of BH fronting?), which is not the case here.

How would fronting affect the alternative I present above? In fact, why should we consider your alternative accurate? What are the rules that would make it so? 

 
thus, a priori (i.e. syntactically) BH verb units come in three varieties: doomed to be waw-prefixed, doomed to be waw-less, and those which have a choice.

Which ones are doomed to be waw-prefixed, and which to be waw-less? And how is the choice made?

 

TAM laws can only shape the third type. in my manuscript i study in detail these situations. i believe that the basic idea (syntax) goes back to blau and peckham (and earlier), but i had only very partial access to their work. in general, it seems to me that in BH a discussion of verb forms without syntactic considerations is almost impossible - but it is the common practice!

LOL! For me, because of my dyslexia, syntax comes almost first. That’s how I compensate for dyslexia, starting with my primary language (English) and extending to every other language I studied. “Context” includes the idea of syntax. If something sounds out of place, I reread it until I’m sure I have each word accurately recorded in my brain. That almost always clears up any strange sounding sentence.

Of the TAM laws, I’ve found zero correspondence of the T & A portions to Biblical Hebrew, and only limited correspondence of the M portion (Yiqtol used for subjunctive and imperative uses and a few others to distinguish them from indicative use where Qatal is used).

more to come...
nir cohen

Sorry if I sound a bit harsh, that’s not my intention.

I now realize that almost everything I was taught about BH verbal use in class was “first year lies” i.e. inaccurate. I had been taught that TA portion of TAM, but by the time I read Tanakh through five–six times, realized that what I had been taught had little relation, if any, to the text before me.

If you can make a case for it, I’d appreciate it, but I may make you work for it.

Yours, Karl W. Randolph.