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Open-Ended Tense in Hebrew


joelmadasu

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I was reading an article by Dr. Randal Buth on Genesis 15:6, where he said, והאמן is an open-ended verb and is not used very often. I want to find out (do a search in Accordance) all the open-ended verbs in the Hebrew Text. Is that possible?

 

Please let me know!

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Hi Joel,

 

  Glancing at the paper which I have not seen before and certainly have not absorbed, it appears to require a certain amount of evaluation of context to determine that a ve-qatal verb conforms to his definition of "open-ended narrative tense". I could not find reference to a tense by that name in my Hebrew grammars nor is such tagged in either Hebrew syntax module. I suspect reference must be made to his other paper. It is possible to search for ve-qatal verbs though that will result in both false positives and false-negatives, given what he describes. All that said one thing that is interesting is Buth's reference to narrative context. The new ETCBC module does permit searching for narrative clauses and thus one can construct a search that will find ve-qatal verbs in such clauses. Whether they all conform to Buth's definition here or not I couldn't say. I also do not know whether such a search would exclude other examples due to tagging or otherwise. I note that my initial quick attempts did fail to find some of his examples, though I found others.

 

Thx

D

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Thank you for your response!

 

I appreciate you taking the time and looking into this.

 

I will also look into the ETCBC! :)

 

I really want to study these "open-ended" tense forms, because, Dr. Buth's paper/article got my attention! :)

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If you don't have the ETCBC right now. On the 30. Dezember 16 it is on sale.

 

Maybe you can share your Research results.

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Ah.. thank you, Fabian! I have been looking on the website if there is any sale on that resource :) 

 

I will make sure to check back on the 30th!

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The issue with Gen 15:6 is that we have a suffix conjugation verb (i.e. perfect) immediately following the initial waw but not in a future/modal frame. In other words, the narrative breaks the Wayyiqtol chain but without the fronted element we would normally expect. A similar example (וְנָעָל) occurs at the end of Judges 3:23. I was able to find both of these examples by looking for a perfect verb [-consecutive] immediately following a waw but only in non-speech contexts (this gets rid of all the conditional clauses where waw+perfect is a normal construction).

 

post-30164-0-21741800-1482500701_thumb.png

 

This search returns 111 hits. Some of these are legitimate uses of the Weqatal in past habitual or repetitive contexts.  For instance, 1 Sam 2:19 begins with a Yiqtol (i.e., imperfect) to set up a habitual past frame so the following verb וְהַעַלְתָה is a normal Weqatal use 'she would bring it up'.

 

Nevertheless, there are some interesting examples in there, so you can see if you agree with Buth or not. Other scholars suggest this is simply a stylistic switch to mark, for instance, the end of a discourse unit rather than signaling anything about tense-aspect-mood. Waw + Qatal is in fact a normal narrative style in some of the Old Aramaic inscriptions where the Wayyiqtol is not frequent. 

 

Pete

 

 

 

 

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Thank you for your comment! I will do the search by following your example. 

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Hi Peter,

 

I am trying to put the construct search as you did, but I was not able to locate "qatal" and "consecutive" as you have in there, and so I am getting different search results. What Hebrew Text/database are you using? 

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Hey Joel,  Double check your preferences -> Greek and Hebrew -> Traditional terms or Modern (QTL) terms. If you check the Modern (QTL) terms then you'll see it.

 

Thx

D

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That search was Biblia Hebraica tagged + Holmstedt syntax (to account for speech). As Daniel noted I have switched my preferences to label the "aspect" forms based purely on morphology (Yiqtol, Qatal, etc.). If you are using traditional terms then you want to replace Qatal with Perfect. The "consecutive" tag is in the "other" pull-down.

 

The morph DB tags an imperfect consecutive in the "aspect" field but perfect forms that are judged to be consecutive are tagged as perfect "aspect" + consecutive "other". The DB doesn't seem to be entirely consistent with which forms are judged as consecutive, however, so I wouldn't trust this search as a comprehensive analysis. It will at least get you started with some other examples of narrative waw+perfect clauses.

 

Pete 

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Hi Pete,

 

I did another search following your example. I am getting 420 hits (?) I did not see Gen 15:6 in the results. I must be doing something wrong.

post-31592-0-79830200-1482952617_thumb.png

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Ok, I think I got it now. But Accordance crashed right after it :) (well, it has been crashing almost every time I run a search!)

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In case you didn't figure it out, you want -consecutive (we are getting rid of the ones marked as consecutive)

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I just figured it out! :) Well, I have been trying to figure it out, but Accordance crashes on just about every construct search. This has been happening for a week or more now, but I just didn't know how to compile the log to report. I also sent an email to Dr. Buth. So, we will see what he says. Hopefully, he won't say - come to Israel (which he said that before :))

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I just figured it out! :) Well, I have been trying to figure it out, but Accordance crashes on just about every construct search. This has been happening for a week or more now, but I just didn't know how to compile the log to report. I also sent an email to Dr. Buth. So, we will see what he says. Hopefully, he won't say - come to Israel (which he said that before :))

 

Hmmm. You should put up a note in the bug swatters section describing the situation of your crash (OS, version of Accordance, etc.). It is not good if you are consistently crashing and Accordance should be able to help you do some troubleshooting. 

 

Pete

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Does anyone have the ETCBC database now? If you do, can you please help me find the open-ended tense forms? 

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Hey Joel,

 

  I took another shot at this merging my original attempts (for the narrative discourse type) with a more complete reading of the note (though likely still not adequate) and input provided by Peter above. I had to do two searches <OR> together to cover both וְ and  וְלֹא cases. I then found that Pete's exclusion of speech is a big help, at least in cutting down the number of results. Whether it also removes real cases I do not know. That yielded 13 hit verses in Genesis, including 15:6, 29:2-3 (well 3 actually because the one in 29:2 is actually the first verb in the chain and not of the correct form), 2:25.

 

  Expanding the search to the entire Hebrew OT we get 203 verses.

 

  Below is the workspace image in case it helps you spot issues with what I've done or if others would like to make suggestions. My Hebrew is primitive, and that's putting positive spin on it :) so I make no claims concerning accuracy or completeness or anything else really. Attached are reference lists of the HMT-W4 with the hits.

 

post-32023-0-81470800-1483504941_thumb.jpg

 

  Anyhow Joel, hopefully this helps you with this interesting quest.

 

Thx

D

Joel-ve-qatal.zip

Edited by דָנִיאֶל
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Thank you so much, Daniel! I appreciate you taking time to do this!

 

I will look into this now. 

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Daniel and Joel,

 

I don't think you want the ולא cases. That is the normal way to place a negative clause (irrealis) in the flow of a Wayyiqtol chain. The issue with these special וקטל clauses is that they are formally identical to the Weqatal (i.e., waw-consecutive + perfect) used for a future/modal chain, but they don't seem best interpreted as future/modal. This ambiguity raises the question whether is is simply a stylistic difference or meant to signal something about tense/mood/aspect. 

 

EDIT: Just noticed that your ולא examples are with the Yiqtol not Qatal. Theoretically that is interesting to look for, but I doubt any of those examples are outside of a past habitual/repetitive context. Let me know if you found one.

 

Pete 

Edited by Peter Bekins
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Hi Peter,

 

  Yeah not sure but I included them because Buth's paper makes explicit mention of one of them - Gen 2:25. I haven't reviewed them myself but I'll be interested in what Joel makes of the results.

 

Thx

D

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Ah, I didn't see that, and I only skimmed Buth's paper. That example throws a bunch of extra variables into the pot, though. The root בוש is stative and then the Hitpael adds a reflexive sense as well so a past imperfective Yiqtol isn't all that unusual. In other words, there is not quite the same level of formal ambiguity with the ולא examples as with the non-future/modal וקטל examples. I would probably stick with the וקטל examples for the first analysis. If you find enough good ולא candidates you could treat them second.

 

Pete 

Edited by Peter Bekins
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Hi, Daniel,

 

Do you still have the workspaces from the .zip files? I have downloaded the .zip files. I can see the number of hits, but not the highlighted forms. Is this normal? Is there a way for you to save the whole workspace (with highlights [by this I mean, terms in red color]) and share that with me? 

 

Please let me know.

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