Notes on the Structure of the Hebrew Verbal System

These really are just notes, not a full-fledged think piece.

The issue with the Hebrew (I mean Biblical Hebrew prose here) verbal system (HVS) is accounting for the different uses of qatal and yiqtol at the appropriate level of generalization. It's not that difficult to list all the different functions of these verbal forms, but finding a way to characterize the whole thing has proved controversial.

Everyone agrees at this point that the HVS is not a tense-only system. This can be demonstrated with one fact:

(1) If HVS were tense-only, then yiqtol could never receive a past interpretation. But it can receive a past interpretation in prose (with the past habitual use).

There is much less unanimity that HVS is not an aspect-only system. In fact, my impression is that this view is held by the majority. Nevertheless, this approach also fails, for the following reason:

(2) If HVS were aspect-only (e.g., perfective/imperfective), then qatal could receive a future interpretation. But in fact, it does not receive a future interpretation in prose.

Hence it seems that HVS is a combined tense-aspect system, with qatal being both past and perfective, and yiqtol being past imperfective (habitual), future (either perfective or imperfective), present (general, not actual) and modal.  Many languages of the world combine tense and aspect (e.g., Greek and English) so there's nothing weird or unwelcome about this. Nevertheless, there is still a hankering (in me, at least) to find some feature of the qatal/yiqtol opposition that licenses its several interpretations without any appeal to the arbitrary.

To me the most important clue lies in an argument made by Jan Joosten (in this JANES article), that yiqtol never indicates the actual present (similar to English present progressive), only the general present (gnomic or habitual). I find Joosten's argument convincing, although you can still find statements in the grammars to the effect that yiqtol can function to indicate the actual present. If Joosten is right, then there are not any functions of yiqtol where it refers to an actual, instantiated verbal action (event, state, or process); that is, it is non-referential in that there is no particular action that it picks out.

Here, then, I think is the opposition. Qatal is referential, yiqtol non-referential; again, by referential, I mean that it points to or picks out a particular instantiated action. If qatal is referential, then that entails past tense. The entailments of yiqtol are not as constrained as those of qatal; not having referentiality means that it can be used for a typical action in the past (habitual) or the present (general present) or for a non-instantiated action (such as the future or modal). Hence the wider range of interpretations or readings (in the semantic sense) that are available for yiqtol.

"Referentiality" is usually discussed in terms of nouns and noun phrases, and verbs are not considered in that context. Nevertheless, I think one can argue that verbs can be referential (like a definite noun phrase) or non-referential (like an adjective or an indefinite noun phrase).

This doesn't explain the workings of what I call the "secondary" HVS, that of wayyiqtol and we-qatal.  I'll discuss those at a later time. Also it leaves open the use of qatal and yiqtol in poetry, where some possible counter-examples to (1) and (2) above can be found. I don't believe that they are true "defeaters" of my proposal, because quite often, in my view, what seem to qatal and yiqtol in poetry are actually forms of we-qatal and wayyiqtol that vary because of the peculiar modes of coordination (and conjunction reduction) available in Hebrew poetry. Again, I'll leave that for another time. Suffice it to say that in the final analysis I think the HVS is ultimately uniform in prose and poetry.

Wow, the New York Times

Well, if that don't beat everything. "Ralph" is mentioned in the New York TImes, in connection with Bob Dylan, natch.

If you are interested in the posts about Dylan, then go here and here and here.

What's next? Osservatore Romano? The Sacramento Bee? Cool.

Fun with Popes and Presidents

One of the most obscure areas of human knowledge is the comparison in ages and terms of office between Popes and Presidents. It is arguably of no value whatsoever, and therefore eminently suited for scholarly research. Based on the studies of myself and my former colleague Matthew Jaffe, I offer the following tidbits in handy question-and-answer format:

Q. How many times in history has a president been inaugurated at an older age than the currently reigning pope?

A. Three times: In 1849, when Zachary Taylor was 64 and Pius IX was 57; in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was 70 and John Paul II was 61; and Reagan again, in 1985, when he was 74 and John Paul II was 65.

Q. Have the president and pope ever been the same age at inauguration time?

A. Yes, once when James Buchanan was 65 and so was Pius IX.

Q. What pope reigned through more presidential administrations?

A. Pius IX, through the terms of Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln, A. Johnson, Grant, and Hayes.

Q. When was the youngest inaugurated president juxtaposed with the oldest reigning pope?

A. In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated at age 42. Leo XIII was then 91, 49 years older.

Q. What president has served through more papal reigns regardless of duration?

A. Jackson and Carter served through three each. Jackson: Leo XII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI; Carter: Paul VI, John Paul I, and the start of John Paul II.

"Loving This Book": Stative and Progressive

This semester our Hebrew seminar is considering the semantics of the Hebrew verb, and, as a foil to other treatments of verbal semantics, we are reading Waltke & O'Connor's Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax with a view to assessing how they dealt with semantic notions.

The last time we met, our agenda was to discuss IBHS ch. 22 (on the Qal) in the light of current thinking about situation aspect, especially stativity. During the discussion, we got held up for a moment by an English example that they use:

[S]tative verbs in English do not occur in progressive forms. ... [For example], one cannot freely say 'I am loving this book.' Since 'love' describes a stative situation (in this case, a psychological state), one freely says 'I love this book.' (IBHS 22.2.1e).

The students unanimously felt that the example was poorly chosen, since in fact one can say "I am loving this book," or the like, as in the following example: "You know that book you gave me for Christmas? Well, I'm really loving it!" Or, "Dr. Cook, I'm really loving this class!" One of them suggested that the language was changing to allow statives to violate the aspectual rule. I suggested this was probably not the case, but was unable, on the fly, to satisfactorily account for the progressive use of "love" except by vaguely saying that it was being used in a different sense in these cases. We had to move on, and there we left it.

I kept thinking about the case, however, and have come to some further conclusions. First of all, I do think the example in IBHS was poorly chosen. A better example of stative+progressive illformedness might be something like *I am knowing the multiplication table or *I am having a new computer or *I am now owning my own home. These usages are indeed incompatible with progressivity, since these statives are not events and denote no action that can "progress" in terms of having some kind of internal temporal structure (like "I am walking the dog").

Second, the situation that IBHS likely envisaged in their sample sentence I am loving this book must have been like the sentences in the previous paragraph, indicating a non-event. For example, if someone pointed to a book on their shelves and said, "See that book with the red cover? Well, I am loving this book," that would be an example of the same kind of illformedness as "*I am owning this book."

Whence, then, the "event" reading of "loving" in I am loving this book? Under that reading, "this book" cannot mean "this object"; it has be taken as "the current process of reading this book." It can't even mean "this book that I finished last week." "Love" can only receive a non-stative reading, and be used in the progressive, when it has for its object (either explicitly or implicitly) another currently ongoing process that is itself progressive. Yet another example: consider the sentence "I am loving this week's episode of Glee." It can only be used of watching this week's episode of Glee (let's say you are on the phone with your friend), and not of the script or performances or plot. Not every stative can participate in this alternation, however.

The fact that Waltke & O'Connor say that the sample sentence cannot be "freely" uttered is unclear. It could mean that they were aware of counter-usages like the one discussed here (in which case they should have chosen a better example).

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The original description of stativity as incompatible with the progressive can be found in Zeno Vendler's classic article, "Verbs and Times," The Philosophical Review, Vol. 66, No. 2. (Apr., 1957), pp. 143-160. By the way, this is not cited in IBHS.

Seventh Annual Ralphies

Here we go ...

Best TV Show: First, I have to say a few words about Lost, which has won this award for several years. By the time the last minute of the show ticked off, the method of the creators had become clear: for five seasons, go as far out on a limb as you possibly can, and then, in the sixth season, cut the limb off. Then, as we watch you drop out of sight, call out "It's better to travel hopefully than it is to arriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!" Um, no, it's not. This was not a year for successful TV. Not only did Lost end with a whimper, but Flashforward and Rubicon, both great and fun shows, were cancelled after one season. However, Fringe had a great year, and has already succeeded where Lost, Heroes, and X-Files all failed. The Ralphie goes to Fringe, with enthusiasm.

Best Movie: Didn't see that many, just the biggest of the big, viz., Toy Story 3 and Inception. Neither one of these highly praised movies stuck in my mind for even 5 minutes after viewing, which is kind of a test I have for a good movie. The only movie that really did that for me was one I viewed on pay-per-view, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It gets the Ralphie.

Best Record: A better year than last year, for sure. Although I didn't buy many records, thanks to YouTube, I heard a fair amount of new and good music. The Black Keys are great; the new Sufjan Stevens; a fictional group called Sex Bob-Omb (music by Beck) that was awesome. But the Ralphie goes to a song that, for 2 weeks this summer, I literally couldn't get out of my mind, namely Fireflies by Owl City. It was even there when I was dreaming, which just shows you that the music module of your brain is separate from the other modules. It took me a while before I finally figured out the song was actually about insomnia.

Best Non-Fiction Book: As you know, I read a truckload of linguistics books and articles; there's a lot of good stuff out there. I would have to put Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature at the top because of its accessibility and generally jaunty style.

Best Fiction Book: The award goes to Lev Grossman's The Magicians. The book is a compulsively readable fantasy that attempts to undermine the worlds of both Harry Potter and Narnia. Me, I love Narnia, but The Magicians is a tremendously fun read on its own terms (unlike, say, the works of the King of Boredom, Philip Pullman).

Now We Are Six

On November 30, 2004, the first post of this blog appeared. The first year or so was quite active, and coincided approximately with the birth of biblioblogging, of which this blog was one of the first. But "Ralph" has never sought, or received, any factitious badge of approval or value-ranking from the world of biblioblogging (now firmly part of the Establishment) and I now question whether my blog is a part of that increasingly self-conscious and contentious world.

The last few years have been less active, as other activities have crowded out daily, or even weekly, blogging. Most particularly, I consciously decided a while back to devote most of the time I had for writing to preparing scholarly books and articles; and, this, I think, was a wise choice.

Still, writing for "Ralph" is always one of my greatest pleasures. Looking back, I see plenty of ephemeral matter, but nothing that embarrasses me. Several of the posts have in the past developed into lectures, presentations, or articles, and some may still do so. And, as far as I know, "Ralph" is still the only blog ever to be cited in a scholarly footnote in Revue de Qumran.

This year especially has been quiet for "Ralph," although the most famous post in Ralph's history was cited in two books about Bob Dylan. One of them is Sean Wilentz's Bob Dylan in America (Doubleday, 2010), pp. 303ff. Wilentz, professor of American Studies at Princeton, cites "Ralph," without giving the URL (how rude!) or the author (how clueless!). Indeed, he appears to believe that the name "Ralph" is my pseudonym, apparently without noticing that my name and email appear (and have always appeared) right there on the blog.

The other citation is in Alessandro Carrera, "Oh, the Streets of Rome: Dylan in Italy," which appeared in Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World (ed. C. J. Sheehy & T. Swiss; Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2009), where the author refers to me as "very puzzled." Sure, if by puzzled you mean outraged. I also was interviewed by phone by yet another author who is writing a book about Dylan. Not bad for a philologist whose expertise is in a wholly different area.

"Ralph" will continue, probably at the same slow pace. And yes, the Ralphies for 2010 will shortly appear. Watch this space.

Scenes and Observations from SBL Atlanta 2010

In no particular order ...


Two huge ballrooms were assigned to a session attended by about 15 people.

My room, thankfully, was in a tower (Hyatt) where I didn't have to go up in one of those glass elevators.

Best meal: Atlanta Grill, with Marty Abegg and James Bowley. We planned the next volume of the Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance.

I bought two books: The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism by Adele Berlin and the Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis.

The good people at Accordance updated me and fixed me up with a ton of awesome software.

The most crowded session I attended was the one on Biblioblogging. I listened to Jim Davila's and Chris Brady's excellent papers on the state of the art, then had to go to another session. Chris suggested (as you can read here) that there be an SBL committee to provide peer-review insight on the tenure-relevant research found in online sources. I agree if the sources are research resources, but not if they are blogs. Blogs should resist "sivilizin'".

Jim Davila is still watching Lost.

Against all probability, the guy I sat next to at the Bloggers lunch lives only a few blocks away from me.

John Hobbins is really tall.

The HUC grad school survives.

I enjoyed discussing syntax with fellow UCLA alums Kirk Lowery and Randy Buth.

There will never be a time when most people know how to deliver a paper at SBL.

I met a man who had taken Hebrew from me over 20 years ago.

I enjoyed talking about Amazon's Kindle with Dean Forbes.

The number of religious books being published every year is inversely proportional to the number of actual Christians.

I worked on my paper the night before I gave it. At least I didn't write my paper the night before I gave it.

Air Tran advertises free Wi-Fi in their terminal. It's only free if you want to check your flight information. For anything else, you have to pay.

I enjoyed seeing some of my students at their first SBL.

The memorial service for Hanan Eshel was moving, with most major Qumran scholars in attendance.

MARTA is better than Metro. Cheaper, too.

The Brill reception was awesome, and the view from the 49th floor of the Peachtree Tower was spectacular.

The Fuller breakfast was great, but it's a little sobering to realize that I am now among the oldest attendees.

I'll add more as I recall more....