The consecutive tenses are fundamental in all descriptions of
Classical Hebrew grammar. They are even basic to the textbooks on
Biblical Hebrew. Being fundamental in the verbal system, and part of any
beginner’s grammar, they pose a serious problem to a linguistic
understanding of the verbal system, since grammars describe an
alternation of ‘forms’ or ‘tenses’ in double pairs: wayyiqṭol alternates
with its ‘equivalent’ qaṭal, and wə-qaṭal alternates with its
‘equivalent’ yiqṭol.
This ‘enigma’ in the
verbal system is handled in the book by recognising that the alternation
of the consecutive tenses with other tenses, in the reality of the
text, represents a linking of clauses. The ‘consecutive tenses’ are
clause-types with a natural language connective wa- directly followed by
a finite verbal morpheme, a type of clause that expressed continuity in
the earliest stage of Semitic. The commonly held assumption that there
is a special ‘consecutive waw’ is unwarranted. The use of the
‘consecutive’ clause-types in order to express discourse continuity
indicates that Classical Hebrew has retained the old unmarked
declarative word order of Semitic syntax. Seen in the light of recent
research on the Tiberian reading tradition, the ‘consecutive’ wayyiqṭol
can be analysed as a retention of the old Semitic past perfective
*wa-yaqtul, which was pronounced wa-yiqṭol in Classical Hebrew. The
‘consecutive’ wə-qāṭal (pronounced wa-qaṭal in the classical language)
constitutes the result of an internal Hebrew development into a
construction (in the sense of Joan Bybee) already foreshadowed in the
earliest Northwest Semitic languages.
The
book understands the ‘consecutive tenses’ as discourse continuity
clauses, which typically form chains of main line clauses. Such chains
can be interrupted by other types of clauses. This interruption is a
clause linking that receives special attention in the interpretation of
the Classical Hebrew verbal system. Chapter six presents a regenerated
text linguistics founded on the new terminology. A clause linking
approach is the central methodological procedure in this book. To this
must be added diachronic typology in a comparative Semitic setting. The
linguistic examples of clause linking are gathered from a large
Classical Hebrew corpus, the Pentateuch and the Book of Judges, and made
searchable in a database of 6559 non-archaic text records.Copyright
Bo IsakssonPublished On
2024-09-17ISBN
Paperback978-1-80511-350-8
Hardback978-1-80511-351-5
PDF978-1-80511-352-2
Print Length
749 pages (xviii+731)
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