Dear Peter,Yes, Ken, I was thinking of your work. Well, I guess Rolf would agree with me that the system you have found for DSS Hebrew is different from that of biblical Hebrew, even if you don't agree.
I suspect you may be referring to my work when you say a significant change
had occurred in the Hebrew verb system by the end of the period in which the
Dead Sea Scrolls were written. (Or were you thinking of Kutscher?)
It is true that I demonstrated in my dissertation that the DSS Hebrew verbs
do not grammaticalize aspect (i.e., viewpoint aspect, as defined by Comrie or
Binnick). But I would not say that this is a change from Biblical Hebrew,
since I am not convinced that Biblical Hebrew grammaticalized aspect either
(despite the recent work by Cook and Furuli). Of the theories regarding
Biblical Hebrew, I am intrigued by those giving prominence to modality (e.g.,
Joosten, Hatav), especially since modality is prominent in Mishnaic Hebrew
and the evidence from Qumran is consistent with a theory that the verb forms
grammaticalize modality.
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.