Re: Hebrew waw consecutive

I have a grammar of Biblical Hebrew which discusses some differences in vocalism
between the imperfect with waw-consecutive and the non-waw-marked imperfect. I
don't have it with me, but I will check when I get home.
-Elliott


--- On Thu, 8/21/08, David McCann <david@...> wrote:

> From: David McCann <david@...>
> Subject: Re: Hebrew waw consecutive
> To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
> Date: Thursday, August 21, 2008, 4:17 PM
> On Wed, 2008-08-20 at 13:43 +0200, Veoler wrote:
>
>
> > Is there some hard evidence for this? As far as I have
> heard there was no
> > real foundation behind waw conversive, and I
> haven't ever seen any proof in
> > any direction. So I'm 67% non-believer in waw
> conversive and 33% agnostic,
> > until I see evidence. Do you have any references about
> the justification or
> > reason to assume the theory?
> >
> > I have'nt got very far in learning Hebrew and
> thought I should wait with
> > this question, but since it was brought up...
> >
> I'm no expert on Semitic languages: a quick check shows
> I read Gray's
> Introduction in 1973 and Gelb on Akkadian in 1982!
>
> I took the example from A. B. Davidson's Hebrew
> Grammar, but he offered
> no comment. I've just looked at Robert Hetzron's
> article in Major
> Languages of the World. He regards the perfective wa- form
> (which he
> rightly, I think, calls a past tense) as original and the
> non-past form
> as derived after wa- came to be seen as a "tense
> switcher". He suggests
> an etymology hawaya "was". I seem to remember
> that Akkadian forms a past
> in u-; but if that's so, Hetzron evidently thinks it
> unrelated. Of
> course, we can't tell what the original vocalisation
> was; it would be
> too good to be true if the prefix were the only tense
> marker.

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