Aspect, Communicative Appeal, and Temporal Meaning in Biblical Hebrew Verbal Forms

This book provides a new explanation for what has long been a challenge for scholars of Biblical Hebrew: how to understand the expression of verbal tense and aspect.

Working from a representative text corpus, combined with database queries of specific usages and surveys of examples discussed in the scholarly literature, Ulf Bergström gives a comprehensive overview of the semantic meanings of the verbal forms, along with a significant sample of the variation of pragmatically inferred tense, aspect, or modality (TAM) meanings. Bergström applies diachronic typology and a redefined concept of aspect to demonstrate that Biblical Hebrew verbal forms have basic aspectual and derived temporal meanings and that communicative appeal, the action-triggering function of language, affects verbal semantics and promotes the diversification of tense meanings. Bergström’s overarching explanation of the semantic development of the Biblical Hebrew verbal system is an important contribution to the study of the evolution of the verbal system and meanings of individual verbs in the Hebrew Bible.

Accessibly written and structured for seminar use, Bergström’s study brings new perspectives to a debate that, in many ways, had reached a stalemate, and it challenges scholars working with TAM and the Biblical Hebrew verb to revisit their theoretical premises. Advanced students and scholars of Biblical Hebrew and other Semitic languages will find the study thought provoking, and linguists will appreciate its contributions to linguistic theory and typology.

“[U]ndoubtedly a significant contribution to our understanding of Hebrew verbal forms.”—Alastair G. Hunter, Society for Old Testament Study Booklist (JSOT)

“Aspect, Communicative Appeal, and Temporal Meaning in Biblical Hebrew Verbal Forms is an ambitious, sophisticated, and technical treatment of a set of recalcitrant problems. The Biblical Hebrew verbal system and how it relates to tense, aspect, and mood has been the object of many studies over hundreds of years, and we are still just in the process of understanding it. This study offers an interesting, overarching solution.”—Martin Gustaf Ehrensvärd, University of Copenhagen

Ulf Bergström is a collaborator on the Andersen-Forbes Syntactic Database project at the University of the Free State in South Africa.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Transliteration Key

Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1 The Problem

1.2 Aim

1.3. What “Meaning” Means

1.3.1. Semantics and Pragmatics

1.3.2. Criteria for Explanatory Semantics

1.4. The Biblical Hebrew Verbal System

1.5. Scope

1.5.1. Source Material

1.5.2. Diachronic Diversity

1.5.3. Prose and Poetry

1.6. Summary

Chapter 2. Comments on the State of Research

2.1. Tense

2.2. Aspect

2.2.1. Aspect in Classical Grammar

2.2.2. Modern Times

2.2.3. Reference Time, Focused Time, and Deictic Centers

2.2.4. Aspect in Hebraistic Studies

2.3. Modality

2.4. Linguistic Attitude (Sprechhaltung)

2.5. The Grammaticalization Approach

2.6. Summary

Chapter 3. A Theory of Aspect and Tense

3.1. Introductory Note: Nonsemantic Factors Indicating Tense

3.2. Aktionsart

3.3. Focused Time and the Definition of Tense and Aspect

3.4. Stage- Based Aspect

3.4.1. Resultative

3.4.2. Progressive

3.4.3. Preparative

3.4.4. Stage- Based Aspect and Aktionsart: An Overview

3.5. Stage- Based Versus Limit- Based Analysis of Aspect

3.6. Temporalization

3.7. Summary

Chapter 4. Progressive and Resultative Verbs in Biblical Hebrew

4.1. Qotel 98

4.1.1. Invariant Progressive qotel 98

4.1.2. Temporalized qotel 103

4.1.3. Nonprogressive and Nominal qotel 104

4.2. Yiqtol-L 108

4.2.1. Invariant Progressive yiqtol-L 108

4.2.2. Temporalized yiqtol-L 114

4.3. Qatal 118

4.3.1. Invariant Resultative qatal 119

4.3.2. Temporalized qatal 132

4.3.3. Adjectival and Verbal Stative qatal 141

4.4. Yiqtol-S 142

4.4.1. Invariant Resultative yiqtol-S: wayyiqtol 142

4.4.2. Temporalized wayyiqtol 149

4.4.3. Free- Standing Declarative yiqtol-S 151

4.4.4. Volitive yiqtol-S 155

4.5. Summary

Chapter 5. Communicative Appeal and the Semantics of the Biblical Hebrew Verb

5.1. The Semiotic Foundations for a Theory of Appeal in Language 158

5.2. Criteria for Full Communicative Appeal 162

5.2.1. Imminence 162

5.2.2. Nonexpectancy 163

5.2.3. Efficiency 165

5.3. Communicative Appeal and Verbal Grammar: The Case of the

English Progressives 170

5.4. Communicative Appeal in the Biblical Hebrew Verbal System 172

5.4.1. The Resultative Subsystem 173

5.4.2. The Progressive Subsystem 176

5.4.3. The Volitive Subsystem 180

5.5. Summary

Chapter 6. Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction