To: Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>, Hebrew List <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: WP
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 11:26:02 -0500
Dave,
I forgot to respond to the last part of your post:
Dave Washburn wrote:
>
> I'm going to go out on a limb here and state something that I
> haven't said publicly before, but have held for years: I don't think
> there truly is such a thing as the weqatal. It has no distinct form,
> very unlike the WP (except for the Masoretic accentuation, which
> may or may not be accurate) and can be explained just as easily
> as a simple qatal that happens to occur at the beginning of a
> clause with a conjunction. We are told in our baby Hebrew
> classes that there are examples of W+qatal that are not weqatals,
> yet we're supposed to accept that somehow somebody knows the
> difference. I don't buy it. As you pointed out, the "conversive" idea
> is more than a little suspect, and I tend to wonder if the medieval
> grammarians didn't come up with the 4-part verbal system with two
> unconverted and two converted forms for the sake of symmetry.
I was not suggesting a 4-part verb system. I believe in a 2-part system. I
was only
describing weqatal in the way it functions to continue other verb forms. You
did not really
respond to that issue.
--
Lee R. Martin
Pastor, Prospect Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee
Instructor in Hebrew and Old Testament
Church of God Theological Seminary http://www.earth.vol.com/~lmartin/