RE: [b-hebrew] masorete pointing v's LLX transliterationsDear James,
In the archives you will find hundreds of posts discussing the verbal system
of classical Hebrew. So I will just give a few comments below.
There are three basic problems in published studies of the the Hebrew verbal
system:
1) It is *assumed* that Hebrew has four different conjugations
(YIQTOL/WEYIQTOL, WAYYIQTOL, QATAL, and WEQATAL). This assumption prevents
any real test of the number of conjugations of the verbal system, because if
you start with four you end up with four.
2) The basic distinction between semantic meaning (intrinsic or uncancelable
meaning) and conversational pragmatic implicature (meaning dependent on the
context) is ignored. ...
3) When aspect is applied to Hebrew verbs, it is assumed that Hebrew aspects
have the same nature as the aspects in other aspectual languages. I am not
aware of a single study where the nature of Hebrew aspect has been studied in
its own right, from the viewpoint that aspect can be language specific.
I have studied the functions of the verbs, but my goal has been to find the
*meaning* of each verb form, i.e. to find the parts of the verbal system that
always will have the same meaning. Because any verb form can have past,
present, and future meaning, can express completed and uncompleted events (or
bounded and unbounded events), ...
... my conclusion is that neither tense (=grammaticalized location in time)
nor aspect as it is found in English are grammaticalized in classical Hebrew.
However, the Hebrew conjugations do express aspect, but with a nature very
different from the English aspects. This means that YIQTOL, WEYIQTOL, and
WAYYIQTOL represent the imperfective aspect and QATAL and WEQATAL represent
the perfective aspect.
... My conclusions are radical indeed, because they in a way turn of HebrewRolf, what turns Hebrew grammar upside down is not your conclusions, but your initial *assumption*, that verb forms which are distinct in form and which in traditional grammar have very different meanings are in fact semantically identical. Since you started with this assumption, it is of course part of your conclusion, but it is not a meaningful result because it is clear that if you start with a different assumption you end up with different conclusions - indeed you said so yourself: "if you start with four you end up with four". So, unless you can demonstrate very clearly that your assumption (not your conclusions) must be correct and the alternative assumption must be incorrect, the best you can hope to prove by your method is that there is an alternative consistent interpretation of Hebrew verbs, and that we cannot be sure which of the two interpretations is the correct one. I don't think you have actually demonstrated that your assumption leads to an alternative consistent interpretation (although I haven't seen your final results on this), but that's a separate issue.
verb grammar upside down. An acceptance of the conclusions would have a great
impact on Bible t
ranslation, because thousands of verbs in modern Bible translations are in
need of re-translation. This relates particularly to the temporal references
of verbs.
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.