Hi Peter,
What would you say the "prehistory" of the wayyiqtol form might be, ie its process of grammaticalisation?
I'm still sitting on the fence regarding this issue, but here's some of my thoughts. I understand prefixes to have often once been independent words. If this is true of wayyiqtol (I'm not decided yet), the entire form is now bound, sure, but once it may not have been. In other words, the fact that the form is now bound, even with a marker of definiteness, does not really prove one way or the other regarding whether an independent word (whether a marker of definiteness or something else) has become attached through regular use to the verb or not.
Now the grammaticalisation path of definite markers seems to be from anaphoric demonstratives. Since these deictic words are independent in Hebrew, this may point to a time when the prefix was not attached to the verb. This would probably be the case for whatever hypothesised word, eg 'az etc.
Further, the matter may depend on at what stage wayyiqtol became grammaticalised, ie before or after the definite article in Hebrew (I'm here assuming this article theory for the sake of argument). If before, I think we would have to say that an independent word has become bound; but if after, we could say that the definite article came to be applied to the preterite\jussive verb.
I'm sure this would be interesting, but I don't have easy access.
Anyway, there's some thoughts. In the end, I'm not sure if we can prove the point from our texts. But stugying this area typologically would probably be fruitful. Cynthia Miller has some interesting things to say using a typological argument on the emergence of the definite article West Semitic; see:
Miller, Cynthia L. "Methodological Issues in Reconstructing Language Systems from Epigraphic Fragments." Pages 281-305 in The Future of Biblical Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions. Edited by James K. Hoffmeier and Alan Millard. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.
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