Dear Peter,
The question under discussion was whether we can distinguish between WAYYIQTOLs and WEYIQTOLs in unpointed texts. The answer is No! I have only a part of my data base where I am at present, but I quick look at what I have, revealed that 90.5 % of 3.p.s.m. WEYIQTOLs of lamed he verbs were apocopated. ...
... While jussive forms may be apocopated, that is not always the case. I analyse 5,117 YIQTOLs as modal, yet I found only 298 apocopated forms of these. ...
... Many occur after the negativeparticle )L. Of 598 exmples of YIQTOLs preceded by )L, I found 123 apocopated forms and 30 long forms of those verbs that could be apocopated. ...
... You should not be too quick to give your interpretation when you see verb statistics. While quantity comparisons are important, quality assessments are even more important. To do that you need to work with the text from which the statitics is taken, using discourse analysis, looking for word order, modality, stress patterns, suffixes, and peculiarities of each root. Without this your interpretation cannot bebalanced.I agree that these factors may also be important. However, if I see a clear correlation between Masoretic pointing as WAYYIQTOL and apocopation, even if the match is not precise, that is evidence that there is a distinction here which goes back before the Masoretes.
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