Approaches to the Verbal System of Biblical Hebrew

109 entire history of the study of the Hebrew verb, but rather to give adequate background for the present study of . For greater detail on the history of the study of the biblical Hebrew verb, see McFall 1982, Waltke and O’Connor 1990, Hatav 1997, and Garr 1998.

6.2.1 Approaches to the Verbal System of Biblical Hebrew

The main goal of the study of the biblical Hebrew verb has been to explain what motivates the patterns of verbal forms observed in the text. The main category employed to describe the Hebrew verb in early periods of its study was tense. As Waltke and O’Connor comment: the medieval Jewish grammarians and Christian scholars of the Hebrew Scriptures thought that qtl, qôt l, yqtl signified past, present, and future times respectively. Waltke and O’Connor 1990, 458 Concerning this early period, McFall comments that [i]t was probably assumed in Europe at that time that every language in the world had a tense system; therefore, it was natural for them to look for the Indo-European tense system in BH. McFall 1982, 16 These tense-based approaches were predominant during the time leading up to Ewald’s 1827 Kritische Grammatik der hebräischen Sprache. The tense-based description of the verbal system gave rise to the waw-conversive theory in the attempt to account for the effect of on the QATAL and YIQTOL forms, yielding the WEQATAL and WAYYIQTOL respectively. According to McFall, this theory “dominated the grammars, writings and commentaries of Christian Hebraists until the grammars of Lee and Ewald broke new ground in 1827” McFall 1982, 17. 110 Ewald’s description of the verb employed not tense but aspectual categories such as “completed” and “incompleted,” and subsequently the terms “perfect” and “imperfect” came into use to refer to the QATAL and YIQTOL forms respectively. The growing sense that tense was not providing the explanatory key to the Hebrew verbal system led to broad acceptance of the aspectual explanation. Rather than merely incorporate aspectual insights into the tense model, however, aspect essentially replaced tense as the explanatory category for the Hebrew verb. Just the fact, however, that aspect is a significant grammatical category in some languages does not automatically mean that aspect is grammaticalized in the same way in another language. This is exactly the same kind of analytical fallacy into which the tense-based approaches had fallen by assuming that only one such category could explain the full spectrum of the uses of the verbal forms and how they relate to the Hebrew verbal system. The paradigm shift has been so strong that Hebrew is sometimes referred to as a “tenseless” language. Before proceeding, however, the term “tenseless” requires explanation. This term should be understood as referring to a system in which the verbal forms themselves are not morphologically marked with explicit tense indicators. As an example of explicit tense indicators, consider the following verbs from Mapudungun: amun amu-a-n dungun dungu-a-n I went, go I will go I spoke, speak I will speak The -a- in both examples is the explicit indicator of the future, contrasted with non-future. In the Hebrew forms QATAL and YIQTOL , there are regular morphological patterns, but the question is what the difference in form indicates. Those who use a term like “tenseless” mean that the suffix-prefix contrast in form is not an indication of tense. 111 Indeed, as Waltke and O’Connor comment, “Biblical Hebrew has no such simple tense forms” Waltke and O’Connor 1990, 458. Unfortunately though, the use of a term like “tenseless” can lead to widespread misunderstanding and misrepresentation, giving the impression that tense or temporal marking is not even a part of the biblical Hebrew system. This results in Waltke and O’Connor’s observation that most translators “fly by the seat of their pants in interpreting the Hebrew conjugations” and what others have observed that the tenses are “used promiscuously” Bayly 1782, 22. One of the most intriguing comments regarding the perplexing verbal system of biblical Hebrew is by Goldfajn: Ever since I started looking into this subject I have been intrigued by the evident discrepancy which one perceives between, on the one hand, the relative ease with which most readers of BH seem to understand the temporal indications of the BH verbs and, on the other hand, how difficult it has proved to come up with adequate accounts which would explain the temporal ordering of BH. Goldfajn 1998, 2 As mentioned above, aspect has essentially replaced tense as the descriptive category for the biblical Hebrew verb, but this seems to be based on the assumption that a verbal system exclusively marks only tense or only aspect. Tense and aspect, however, are interconnected systems that have been artificially separated in linguistic descriptions of verbal systems. As Payne states: Tense, aspect, and mode are sometimes difficult to tease apart. In fact, it may be that linguists have thought of these three categories as distinct only because they are somewhat distinct in the classical languages and in Indo- European generally. Payne 1997, 234 112 In practice, tense theories admit degrees of aspectual nuance and aspectual theories admit that the verbs have certain temporal features which are contextually defined. The multidimensional analysis implemented in this study does not require that there be any binary opposition between tense and aspect, since it is not expected that only one category such as tense or aspect will be sufficient for full analysis of the Hebrew verb. Tense and aspect are not mutually exclusive categories as if a “tense system” were incapable of indicating aspectual notions or as if an aspectual system were incapable of expressing temporal distinctions. The attempts to describe the biblical Hebrew verbal system as if the verbs only indicated tense or aspect have typically been made by imposing the expectations of some linguistic system foreign to Hebrew. There is no theoretical reason why a verbal system can only mark either tense or aspect; there is also no theoretical reason why the distinctions of tense and aspect must be encoded morphologically in the verbal forms themselves. More detail will come in the following sections, but in the model implemented here tense and aspect are potential dimensions of all verbal forms. Mood is another category used to capture the nuances of verbal systems. Descriptions of biblical Hebrew have started taking mood into account. Indicative of the overlap between the categories of aspect and mood is the following comment by Chisholm: “it is difficult to reduce the essence of the imperfect to a single concept, for it encompasses both aspect and mood” Chisholm 1998, 89. Mood or modality is a necessary dimension of the verb since all verbal forms characteristically indicate some type of modality. 113 In general linguistics, the acronym TAM is used to represent the Tense-Aspect-Mood system of a language. The use of this acronym is an acknowledgement of the inseparability of these systems. As Payne states: Tense , aspect, and mode TAM for short are operations that anchor or ground the information expressed in a clause according to its sequential, temporal, or epistemological orientation. Payne 1997, 233 Applied to Hebrew, the verbal system would not be analyzed in exclusive terms of tense, aspect, or mood; each verb would be considered for its potential temporal, aspectual, or modal features. To TAM, however, another dimension needs to be added, namely that of Pragmatic Role in order to represent the context-sensitive way in which verb forms indicate temporal, aspectual, modal, and pragmatic features. TAMP, then, incorporates Pragmatic Role as an integral part of the description of the verb form helps systematize the contextual dimensions of usage in text. The full description of a verb, therefore, is its TAMP profile, since no single dimension captures the whole description. For example, within an aspectual system, the WAYYIQTOL is sometimes defined as indicating SEQUENTIALITY . If this is seen as the essential character of the WAYYIQTOL , all non-sequential uses become exceptions. For example, certain WAYYIQTOL s have a summarizing character that is not sequential, whereas other WAYYIQTOL s clearly do indicate a chronological progression of events. SEQUENTIALITY is an important feature of the WAYYIQTOL , but not the defining characteristic. Likewise, if ANTERIORITY is seen as Figure 7: TAMP Profile Tense Aspect Mood Pragmatic role verb 114 the defining feature of the QATAL , apparent exceptions will need to be explained. In a dynamic, context-sensitive view, certain features will be highlighted in certain contexts and will not be in focus in others. Under certain pragmatic or narrative conditions, the SEQUENTIALITY of the WAYYIQTOL and the ANTERIORITY of the QATAL are suppressed in favor of other features which come into play under those conditions. This does not mean, however, that SEQUENTIALITY and ANTERIORITY cannot be primary or predominant features of the WAYYIQTOL and QATAL , but they are not the only ones. Consider 2 Sam 11:14-15 in this regard: In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. He had written in the letter, saying, “Place Uriah in the front line of the fiercest battle and withdraw from him, so that he may be struck down and die.” Pc-vqw3msXa Pp+Pa-ncms Pc-vqw3ms np ncms Pp-np Pc-vqw3ms Pp-ncfsc np Pc-vqw3ms Pp+Pa-ncms Pp-vqc vqvmp Po-np Pp-Pp ncbpc Pa-ncfs Pa-afs Pc- vqp2mp{2} Pp-PdX3fs Pc-vnp3ms{2} Pc-vqp3ms{2} + 5 8 I 5 5 3 8 2 Sam 11:14-15 Notice that 5 occurs in both 11:14 and 11:15. After the , there are three WAYYIQTOL s. If SEQUENTIALITY is assumed, each of these verbs should move the “narrative clock” ahead in somewhat similar fashion. This, however, is not the case, as plotted on the following graph: Text: 5 5 Time: 5 5 Figure 8: Narrative Time 115 The 5 in 11:14 and at the beginning of 11:15 refer to the same action and cannot in any way be construed as indicating SEQUENTIALITY . Analysis of the WAYYIQTOL needs to account for these occurrences as well as for those which are indeed sequential in nature. One of the ways to work toward an answer to what is happening with this WAYYIQTOL is to ask 1 what other narrative options were available? and 2 how would the narrative depiction have been affected by the use of another form? If, for example, it were a WE - X - QATAL I , what would change? 1 The answer to this question depends, of course, on what function is assigned to the WE - X - QATAL in the overall verbal system in biblical Hebrew narrative. Niccacci states that when the WE - X - QATAL is used, “the narrative flow is broken to provide information required for the communication of the actual narrative” Niccacci 1990, 40. Based on this analysis by Niccacci, I in 2 Sam 11:15 would break the flow of the narrative, providing important information about the letter. It is crucial to observe, however, that the clause initiated by the WAYYIQTOL 5 also provides information required for the communication of the narrative, i.e., the message of the letter. In BHRG 346-50, the authors comment on the “[s]emantic-pragmatic functions of fronting,” stating that [t]he fronted complement or adjunct signals that an entity is introduced, activated or reactivated to function as the topic of an utterance. The event referred to by means of the predicate of that utterance is not discourse active. van der Merwe, Naudé, Kroeze 1999, 347 1 The sequence of waw + noun object + qatal + noun subject is attested, for example, in Josh 2:25 C and Judg 7:24 +G . 116 Based on van der Merwe’s discussion, the hypothetical WE - X - QATAL in 2 Sam 11:15 would be an example of reactivating an entity. The effect of this reactivation is to heighten the level of focus associated with the nominal item in the WE - X - QATAL and this appears to be precisely why the text does NOT have a WE - X - QATAL here. Even though the WAYYIQTOL in 2 Sam 11:15 seems anomalous, its use maintains the focus on David as agent without shifting focus to the letter itself. This is a good example of a WAYYIQTOL being used where SEQUENTIALITY is not the feature in focus.

6.2.2 The Multi-Dimensional Verb Analysis Implemented in this Study