A Tense-Prominent Analysis of Biblical Hebrew Qatal (Continued)

In an essay entitled “The Biblical Hebrew qatal verb: a functional discourse grammar analysis,” Linguistics 47 (2009) 824-844, Matthew Anstey offers a tense-prominent analysis of the verbal system of Biblical Hebrew. This is the second installment of a review essay dedicated thereto.

According to Anstey, BH qatal “has Past as its core meaning, for the following straightforward reason: in the range of [its attested] functions . . . Past is clearly the default interpretation in narrative and reported speech. The other uses occur in much more restricted constructions and contexts” (827).

The more restricted uses of qatal Anstey has in mind are the following: hypothetical/ conditional, politeness, proverbial (gnomic, tenseless), and future. In this post, I look at hypotheticals/ conditionals.

The use of qatal in hypotheticals/ conditionals might seem to be clear proof that qatal does not necessarily reference a past with respect to a particular point of reference. However, in hypotheticals/ conditionals no less than in “real-world” narration, events are imagined to occur in a sequence, if only hypothetically.

Here are Anstey’s examples. I translate so as to bring out the “pastness” of the imagined event expressed by means of a qatal verb. First example (832-33):

כִּי הִתְעַלַּלְתְּ בִּי

לוּ יֶשׁ־חֶרֶב בְּיָדִי

כִּי עַתָּה הֲרַגְתִּיךְ

Because you mocked me,
if I had a sword in my hand,
by now I would have killed you! (Num 22:29)

In this example, a conceivable obstacle to understanding qatal as referring to an event that would have already occurred within an imagined sequence of events is its co-occurrence with עתה ‘now.’ Doesn’t a present time-frame require a verb in the present? In point of fact, no. That’s why, in English, it is legitimate to say, “Now you’ve done it.” Or “Just now I saw his cards; we win!” “Now” covers the immediate past and the immediate future, not just the present in the strict sense. A further example from BH narration:

אַף כִּי לוּא אָכֹל אָכַל הַיּוֹם הָעָם

מִשְּׁלַל אֹיְבָיו אֲשֶׁר מָצָא

כִּי עַתָּה לֹא־רָבְתָה מַכָּה בַּפְּלִשְׁתִּים

How much better if the troops had eaten today
from the spoil of their enemies that they found,
for the death toll among the Philistines would now have been greater. (1 Sam 14:30)

Second example (833):

כִּי לוּלֵא הִתְמַהְמָהְנוּ

כִּי־עַתָּה שַׁבְנוּ זֶה פַעֲמָיִם

For had we not lingered,
by now we would have come back twice. (Gen 43:10)

Anstey also translated the above as if the qatals had a past reference relative to particular points of reference implied by the text’s pragmatics. Third (and last) example (833):

וְאִם־הֵנִיא אָבִיהָ אֹתָהּ

בְּיוֹם שָׁמְעֹו

כָּל־נְדָרֶיהָ וֶאֱסָרֶיהָ

אֲשֶׁר־אָסְרָה עַל־נַפְשָׁהּ

לֹא יָקוּם

But if her father restrained her
on the day of his hearing thereof,
all her vows and her binding pledges
she bound herself to
shall not stand. (Num 30:6)

A past tense translation of qatal in this passage is usually avoided because the tense-switching to qatal from the yiqtol at the onset of the unit (30:4) – ואשה כי־תדר נדר ליהוה “and a woman, if she makes a vow to יהוה” - is awkward in a formal register. Nonetheless, I would argue, in ancient Hebrew such tense-switching is normal. Within Num 30:6, the switch from qatal to yiqtol serves to highlight the temporal and logical consequentiality of the event expressed by the yiqtol in the apodosis with respect to the events encoded in the protasis by qatals.

Are there BH qatals in which reference to a past relative to a particular time frame cannot be detected? I’m not sure there are. For example, in every instance in which I previously offered a simple present translation of cases of qatal in Psalm 119, reference to a past relative to an imminent time-frame encoded by a proximate yiqtol or imperative is detectable. Translation that brings this out might go like this:

הַדְרִיכֵנִי בִּנְתִיב מִצְוֹתֶיךָ

כִּי־בֹו חָפָצְתִּי׃

Lead me in the path of your commands,
for therein I have found delight. (Ps 119:35)

וְאֶעֱנֶה חֹרְפִי דָבָר

כִּי־בָטַחְתִּי בִּדְבָרֶךָ

And I will answer my taunter with a word,
for I have put my trust in your word. (Ps 119:42)

גַּל מֵעָלַי חֶרְפָּה וָבוּז

כִּי עֵדֹתֶיךָ נָצָרְתִּי׃

גַּם יָשְׁבוּ שָׂרִים בִּי נִדְבָּרוּ

עַבְדְּךָ יָשִׂיחַ בְּחֻקֶּיךָ׃

Roll away from (their position) over me taunt and abuse,
for your precepts I have kept.
Princes have met [lit., sat], they were outspoken against me;
your servant will reiterate your rulings. (Ps 119:22-23)

טָפְלוּ עָלַי שֶׁקֶר זֵדִים

אֲנִי בְּכָל־לֵב אֶצֹּר פִּקּוּדֶיךָ

טָפַשׁ כַּחֵלֶב לִבָּם

אֲנִי תּוֹרָתְךָ שִׁעֲשָׁעְתִּי׃

The arrogant have smeared me with lies;
I on my part will wholeheartedly keep your decrees.
Their heart has grown thick like fat;
I on my part have made your direction my pleasure. (Ps 119:70-71)

יְבֹאוּנִי רַחֲמֶיךָ וְאֶחְיֶה

כִּי־תוֹרָתְךָ שַׁעֲשֻׁעָי

May your mercies reach me, and I live,
for your direction is my source of pleasure. (Ps 119:77)

יְרֵאֶיךָ יִרְאוּנִי וְיִשְׂמָחוּ

כִּי לִדְבָרְךָ יִחָלְתִּי

Those who fear you see me and rejoice
that I have looked to your word. (Ps 119:74)

To be continued.

Comments

[Calvin]

John, I have not yet had the opportunity to read Anstey's article, but I am curious about the idea of Qatal as always past (or perhaps better "with reference to past" or "past time, relative to some other event, real or imagined, within the context"). I have in mind, specifically, 1 Samuel 2.16, the final clause of which reads:

ואם־לא לקחתי בחזקה

I would translate, "and if not, I will forcibly take it." Given the context I can't see how the Qatal can be taken as somehow past ("and if not, I will have taken it"??). However, it is entirely possible that I have misunderstood Anstey's point (and, in so doing, misunderstood your own point) since I have not yet read his essay. Nevertheless, I am curious.

[JohnFH]

Hi Calvin,

To put it very briefly, what I am arguing, taking Anstey's analysis a step further, is that tense-prominent analysis of the principal finite verbal forms of BH makes as as much sense as tense-prominent analysis of a number of components of the verbal system of English. Which is to say: a lot.

It remains standard practice for English grammarians to describe the simple past, present perfect, present, and past perfect as tenses (though aspect, given the range of options among past tenses, is also marked via the same forms).

The future is a special case. Since its function within a larger and complex system of modals is clear, its marking of tense, while not denied, is not as central. Therefore it nowadays sometimes placed outside of the English tense system in the strict sense.

There are analogies in ancient Hebrew, with respect to both qatal and yiqtol. With respect to qatal, what do I mean? From my next post, two examples:

. . . וְנִבְחַר מָוֶת מֵחַיִּים בְּכָל־הַמְּקֹמוֹת הַנִּשְׁאָרִים אֲשֶׁר הִדַּחְתִּים שָׁם

Death will be preferable to life . . .
in all the places to which I have driven the survivors. (Jer 8:3; cf. Jer 24:9)

לֹא־תָשׁוּב לָלֶכֶת
בַּדֶּרֶךְ אֲשֶׁר־הָלַכְתָּ בָּהּ
You shall not come back
by the way you came (1 Kgs 13:17)

In such contexts, אדיחם / “I will have driven them” and תלך / “you will have come,” while possible, do not represent standard diction.

With respect to English, the use of the simple past and present perfect to express anteriority in non-matrix clauses is of course well-known. But grammarians do not on that basis refrain from offering tense-prominent analyses of both forms.

Now, if you want to forgo a tense-prominent analysis of ancient Hebrew qatal on account of examples like the ones just cited, for consistency's sake you should do the same for the English simple past and present perfect.

By all means, if you find it helpful to analyze the simple past and present perfect in English as if they did not express relative tense, be my guest. Whatever you come up with, if cogent, will by analogy be of service to you when you teach Hebrew qatal as if did not express relative tense.

The example that you cite is an example of relative tense. A translation that brings that out might go like this:

"I will have taken it by force if you will not give it over this instant."

That does not quite work in English, but I imagine you get the idea. The event referred to in "I will have taken it by force" is in the past relative to "if you will not give it over this instant." The speaker makes use of past tense presentation because its suit his purpose, which is to be as threatening as possible. Unless the sacrificer hands over the desired object immediately, the object is a good as already taken away from him by force.

English allows things to be staged in this way in fewer linguistic situations than in ancient Hebrew. But we can say:

You've been had unless you give that to me right away.

"You've been had" contains a threat of undoing unless something else is done. A hypothetical future event is given a past-tense presentation.

If my analysis remains murky in your eyes, let me know. And by all means, send whatever apparent counterexamples known to you this way.

[Calvin]

John, having now read Anstey's article, I think I understand a little better. I agree with a great number of his points, especially in regards to Qatal vs. Wayyiqtol in narrative, and the issue of narrative vs. narration (or what I might term narrative vs. direct speech).

As he admits, his article assumes a tense-prominent analysis of Qatal, but does not devote any time to arguing for such. I remain unconvinced that tense is the best way to understand the BH verbal system. I would favor an aspect-prominent approach (at least in regards to Qatal). However, it seems to me that your analysis of the example I mentioned above ends up at the same result that an aspect-prominent analysis might.

For example, I would analyze the use of Qatal in 1 Samuel 2.16 to be, much as you did, an issue of the lad being as threatening as possible. The action (which has not occurred yet) is seen as already completed. But, that's because I understand Qatal to be perfective as opposed to past-tense. Now, I suppose that this is not too far off the mark from saying that Qatal contains relative-past time. The conclusion is the same (identical?) but we are arriving at it from separate directions.

The examples you gave could also be understood as perfective, as opposed to simple past.

[JohnFH]

That's right, Calvin.

And if you wish, you can describe the English simple past and present perfect in the examples given as perfect in aspect rather than as marking tense.

But even if the result is the same, I don't find a tenseless analysis of the English verbal system particularly helpful. I feel the same way about a tenseless analysis of ancient Hebrew.

An aspect-prominent analysis of the BH verbal system also leaves unexplained why the native grammatical tradition of the Hebrew language understood qatal, yiqtol, and qotel (predicative participle) as tenses. I'm not sure I want to line myself up against the medieval grammarians on such a fundamental issue without just cause.

Thanks for the conversation.

[Phil Sumpter]

John,

Could you say in a word how stative verbs fit into this scheme? They're usually translated present ...

[JohnFH]

Hi Phil,

That's because, in English and plenty of other languages, past-tense presentation of states via stative verbs (stative semantically speaking, irrespective of morphology) doesn't work very well, or doesn't work at all, because a present / past opposition is grammaticalized to express a tense distinction.

Not so in ancient Hebrew. Thus we have the common expression:

אני ידעתי כי

A translation that maintains the (ex hypothesi) past-presentation for states that have their origin in the past but are not over, might go like this: "I have come to know that."

But that, admittedly, is unidiomatic English. "I know that" is idiomatic English. "I was aware that" sounds better, but still sets up a false distinction, as if the speaker was once aware of something, but isn't any longer, which is not the sense of the Hebrew.

In the case of Gen 28:16:

אכן יש יהוה במקום הזה ואנכי לא ידעתי

In idiomatic English, that has to be translated as:

. . . and I did not know it.

The verb "know" in English in this case describes a state but it is presented as a past occurrence. The past tense presentation of the state serves to clarify that it is in fact a past state, over and done with, that is referenced. In the past, Jacob did not know. Now, of course, Jacob knows that YHWH is in said place.

Ancient Hebrew, on the other hand, does not encode the distinction just referred to via verb morphology. Nor does AH have past perfect (had known) or future perfect (will have known) morphology. Qatal by itself normally encodes what in English can or must be encoded by discriminating morphology.

If one wishes to maintain in translation the fact that Hebrew doesn't use contrasting morphology across these occurrences, it is possible but stilted and potentially misleading to translate:

I was aware that . . .
Surely the LORD is in this place, but I wasn't aware (of it).

As far as I know, the same argument applies to verbs in Hebrew that are morphologically marked as statives, like "love" and "hate." But if you know of examples that seem to suggest otherwise, shoot them this way.

[Phil Sumpter]

Thanks John, that's helpful. I have to say, translating a stative verb with a present perfect seems to indicate to me that the verb form shows a perspective rather than strictly tense per se. But I've not studied this so I can't really say. Thanks for giving me food for thought.

[JohnFH]

Hi Phil,

My first point is always: do we know how the language we know best, our mother tongue, marks tense, aspect, and mood? Do we have a coherent description of that? Are we aware of how linguistics has changed the way grammarians understand these questions, and what the areas of dispute are?

Once we have some handle on that, it is possible to think with sufficient humility about the TAM system of a language we understand less intuitively, whose rules are not imprinted or hardwired into us with anywhere near the same degree of certainty. We may even be encouraged to attempt an understanding of the second language from within, rather than through the filter of translations.

All kinds of things happen when the grammar of one language, its binary oppositions, its contrasting forms, its particular way of mapping tense, aspect, and mood, are transferred into the grammar of another language, with its binary oppositions, its contrasting forms, its particular way of mapping tense, aspect, and mood.

English grammar encodes, morphologically and otherwise, a vastly greater quantity of tense, aspect, and mood distinctions than ancient Hebrew.

Given the enormous mismatch, it is not a cogent argument to suggest that because the use of qatal when mapped into idiomatic English usage distributes occurrences of qatal into a variety of grammatical realizations some of which are, modal or aspect-prominent rather than tense-prominent, qatal per se encodes modality or aspect. That remains to be demonstrated.

Much of what passes for "Hebrew grammar" is actually the attempt to provide a rough set of equivalences in terms of mapping necessities at the translational level. But that isn't really Hebrew grammar.

[Phil Sumpter]

Hi John,

I'm totally with you there. I really do think that we need to work on our understanding of our own language and perhaps a few modern ones before we can really start wrestling with these issues. My response to your respone on stative verbs was informed by my reading Lewis' The English Verb: An Exploration of Structure and Meaning (which is one of my favourite books, along side his Lexical Approach to Language Teaching). In that book he even begins to argue that English doesn't strictly encode tense at all (it certainly doesn't have a future tense)!

I guess it depends how one interprets things like “tense” and “aspect.” On Lewis' understanding of the terms, it doesn't seem to me like one can say that stative verbs in Hebrew are references to past time. Rather they seem to referent a quality of time, i.e. one that is somehow “consummated.”

But like I said, I'm way out of my depth! It's still fun talking about it though :) I'm currently exploring the exciting new world of lexical semantics.

[JohnFH]

If someone wants to argue that Hebrew qatal *marks tense and/or aspect in complicated ways*, as do the English simple past (preterit) and present perfect according to a different set of coordinates altogether, and then go on to illustrate those complicated ways carefully, and with judicious comparisons with English and/or other languages, I'm all ears.

I'm a conservative old coot at heart, so I'm more at home in tense-prominent analyses of both ancient Hebrew and modern English.

I even still think of the future as a future tense, though I do understand why a modal system and a tense system are likely to overlap precisely at this point (and do, in both Hebrew and English).