Joshua Blau, Phonology and Morphology of Biblical Hebrew, LSAWS 2, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010.

I have the utmost respect for Professor Blau and was very excited to receive his Phonology and Morphology for Christmas. As I have progressed in my studies/career (when does that transition officially occur?), I have begun to realize the benefit of sitting in class with a great scholar. Published works often represent only a random sampling of knowledge, and they particularly lack synthesis of the field as a whole. Blau’s book is the next best thing to being there. It is like having access to someone’s edited class notes (and even better the bibliography was updated by the late Michael P. O’Connor).

At the beginning Blau gives a very helpful introduction to comparative and historical linguistics, situating Biblical Hebrew within its Semitic context. The book then moves into sections on phonology and morphology. At the beginning of each he provides a short orientation towards phonetics/phonology and morphology. These introductions are very much in the spirit of what I have tried to provide in the sidebar (and remarkably similar in both form and content).

In each section, Blau moves through the standard list of issues, giving concise yet informative summaries of the various viewpoints before giving his synthesis or alternative explanation. For instance, in the section on pretonic lengthening (3.5.7.5) he presents two main views explaining the phenomenon. The first follows Goetze and Poebel and argues that the length was due to the existence of stress on the pretonic syllable in some earlier stage of the language. Blau rejects this since pretonic lengthening also occurs on the conjunction in a phrase such as יוֹם‭ ‬וָלַיְלָה‭ ‬ (Gen 8:2), and it is unlikely that the conjunction ever carried stress. The second view follows Brockelman and argues that pretonic lengthening is a result of the influence of Aramaic on the pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew after the former had replaced the latter as the spoken tongue. Aramaic speakers could not pronounce short vowels in open unstressed syllables, in an attempt to better preserve Hebrew pronunciation, these vowels would be lengthened when read aloud in the synagogue. Blau’s counter argument is a form such asשָׁמְרוּ‭ ‬ ‘they preserved’. In this case, the long vowel in the first syllable is best explained as a result of pre-tonic lengthening from a stage of the language when the stress resided on the second syllable (c.f. pausal form שָׁמָרוּ). Therefore, pre-tonic lengthening must have existed while Biblical Hebrew was still a spoken language. Blau adapts Brockelman’s explanation, but argues, in effect, that pretonic lengthening is a socio-linguistic phenomenon related to competition with Aramaic during the period in which Biblical Hebrew was still spoken. In order to emphasize the contrast with Aramaic, Hebrew speakers lengthened short pre-tonic vowels which Aramaic speakers would have reduced.

This project was begun in 2002 as a translation of earlier work in Modern Hebrew. After significant delays, including the unfortunate passing of Dr O’Connor, you may rightfully be concerned whether the book is sufficiently up to date. I noticed a few places where this may be an issue, though it must also be remembered that Dr Blau is somewhat “Old School” which is one of the reasons I appreciate him. For instance, he presents the standard threefold chronological division of Archaic Biblical Hebrew, Standard Biblical Hebrew, and Late Biblical Hebrew with no acknowledgement of recent discussion of chronology and typology. Dr. Blau also categorizes Arabic with South Arabian and Ethiopic as Southwest Semitic, rather than with Hebrew and Aramaic as Central Semitic, though he does briefly defend this decision. Most puzzling, in the last section (5.2) he discusses the “conversive wāw, which converts past to future and future to past.” This sentence is odd, since I am pretty sure from his writings on the verbal system that Blau rejects the “conversive” explanation, and to be fair, he is only interested in the morphology of the conjunction in this very brief section and not its function.

Frankly, though, when reading through the rest of the book, I was struck by just how out-of-date “phonology and morphology” are. Though Dr O’Connor updated the bibliography, rarely is a work cited from the late 1990′s, much less the 2000′s. Indeed, though my dissertation focuses on both the object markerאת‭ ‬ and the definite article, I am completely uninterested in discussing either the phonology or morphology of either. Much more interesting to me (and my generation, I would assume) are studies in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Unfortunately, the classical order of phonology, morphology, and then syntax seems to prevent anyone from ever getting there.

 

Young, Ian, “What is ‘Late Biblical Hebrew’?” Pages 253-268 in A Palimpsest: Rhetoric, Ideology, Stylistics, and Language Relating to Persian Israel, Edited by Ehud Ben Zvi, Diana Edelman, and Frank Polak. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009.

The third chapter of my dissertation explores the difference in the use of את between SBH and LBH, so I have been wading into some of the recent debate over chronology and typology in biblical Hebrew. In this short article, Young gives a helpful summary of the new approach that he has developed along with Robert Rezetko and Martin Ehrvensärd.

While most students learn Biblical Hebrew (BH) as a monolithic whole, the Hebrew Bible does reflect a certain degree of linguistic diversity. Scholars commonly distinguish three types of Hebrew in the biblical period:

1. Archaic Biblical Hebrew is only represented in older poetry such as Jd 5, Ex 15, etc.

2. Early Biblical Hebrew (EBH, also termed Classical Biblical Hebrew or Standard Biblical Hebrew) is the type normally taught in BH grammars. This is generally considered to be a literary language used during the pre-exilic, monarchic period. The core EBH books include the Pentateuch and Joshua-Kings.

3. Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH) is the post-exilic language found primarily in the books of Esther, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah.

It has generally been assumed that the exile marked a time of social and political upheaval which had linguistic repercussions. The returning exiles would have mainly spoken Aramaic, the high language, while the lower classes who remained in the West would have spoken a vernacular Hebrew which was the ancestor of Rabbinic Hebrew. The new literary language, LBH, therefore, represents the chronological development of EBH under these influences.

Hurvitz (and others) has further argued that post-exilic authors would be unable to write in proper EBH, but that LBH features betray their setting. Therefore, scholars have attempted to use the linguistic typology developed for works whose provenance is relatively certain to establish the chronology of works whose dating is less certain. For instance, Polzin (1976) isolated several features of LBH which he then used to analyze the date of the P source. Hurvitz has also analyzed the date of several Psalms (Hurvitz 1972) and the relationship of P to Ezekiel (Hurvitz 1982).

The relationship between typology and chronology, however, is always troublesome, particularly when there are few independent data points to connect the two. As Kaufman (1986) has argued in regards to script typology, socio-linguistic issues such as dialect geography and diglossia must also be taken into consideration. In this vein, Young, along with Rezetko and Ehrvensärd, has developed the argument that EBH and LBH do not represent the chronological development of a single dialect, but two separate dialects which could have coexisted within the same language community. EBH is a more conservative dialect while LBH is less-so, allowing more variety.

Though Hurvitz argued that the presence of LBH features betrays the hand of post-exilic authors, most of the features isolated as representative of LBH are also found in the core EBH works, just less frequently. Therefore, the presence of a feature itself cannot be an indication of date. Young, Rezetko, and Ehrvensärd illustrated this by counting the number of LBH features in random 500 word samples from various biblical and non-biblical texts. While the accumulation of LBH features is greater in the core LBH books, there were several works which were clearly written in the post-exilic period but which feature a low density of LBH features (e.g. Job 1:1-2:11a, Ben Sira 41:2-44:4, Pesher Habakkuk 5:3-12:13). On the other hand, the pre-exilic Arad Ostraca had more LBH elements than any of the EBH samples considered.

Therefore, if these core EBH texts are in fact pre-exilic, then these LBH features cannot be post-exilic, and Young argues that the choice to use the LBH or its corresponding SBH feature must be stylistic rather than chronological. It is better, therefore, to view LBH not as a ‘deteriorated’ form of SBH, but as a distinct dialect.

In the conclusion to his earlier edited volume (Young 2003), Young suggested that the use of the two dialects could relate to geography. The books written in LBH are also generally considered to have an eastern provenance, while the books written in EBH originated in Judah. While he still likes this theory, he also notes several problems, most notably that Chronicles is generally considered to have a western provenance (though see Person 2010). Here, Young refines this view, suggesting that while LBH features were available to EBH writers, it was only in the eastern diaspora that a new literary style developed which was open to their use. This LBH style may have then migrated to the west where it was used for the last chapters of Daniel and at Qumran.

Some Preliminary Results

My biggest fear for my dissertation was to get a year into the project and find that the data does not support my hypothesis at all. Thankfully, it seems like that will not be the case. After some preliminary research, everything seems to be lining up quite nicely.

As you may recall, I am interested in definiteness, information structure, and the particle את in BH. Largely following Christopher Lyons, I have described definiteness as a semantic and pragmatic category that has to do with identifiability. As I detailed here, identifiability can be considered a scalar which Ellen Prince has described with a four-part scale:

evoked > unused > inferrable > new

The identifiability of a referent can be encoded by the use of pronouns, proper nouns, and determiners, which can be arranged into an implicational hierarchy:

pronoun > proper noun > definite NP > indefinite NP

Identifiability especially interacts with grammar in the expression of subjects and objects, and the object marker את is an interesting example. Scholars have long noted that the particle את is used with objects that can be considered definite, but beyond this, its distribution has been perplexing. As I mentioned in the first post cited above, however, את is a very typical example of the phenomenon termed differential object marking. In DOM languages the frequency of marking is generally tied to the parameters of animacy and definiteness. Subjects tend to be high in animacy and definiteness, thus the thinking is that object marking is motivated by the desire to distinguish more subject-like objects.

There seems to be a general correlation of את-marking with the implicational hierarchy listed above. Pronouns are obligatorily marked in BH, and in his dissertation on valency, Michael Malessa found that proper nouns were marked 97% of the time. Further, while definite objects where marked 73% of the time, those with human and animate referents were marked 90% and 83% respectively, thus there was an obvious effect of animacy on marking. Malessa, however, did not explore the impact of identifiability on marking.

In my preliminary study, I began by randomly pulling 650 finite verbs from the corpus of SBH. From these, I whittled down a group of 291 simple mono-transitive clauses (no compound objects). Pulling out the proper nouns, I had the following results:

Identifiability	Animacy	et	no et	total	%
evoked	animate	25	1	26	0.96
evoked	inanimate	41	7	49	0.84
unused or inferrable	animate	16	3	19	0.84
unused or inferrable	inanimate	57	33	91	0.63
Totals:		139	44	185	0.75

The sample size is small at this point, but the results are in-line with what I would expect. Objects that are most topic-worthy, being both animate and evoked, are marked 96% of the time. Objects that are high in animacy but low in identifiability (or vice-versa) are marked about 84% of the time, while objects low in both identifiability and animacy are marked only 63% of the time. Overall, definite noun phrases were marked 75% of the time as objects, similar to Malessa’s finding of 73%.

Now I need to scale up the data and investigate some of the other interesting relationships. I will also be investigating the more complex cases such as di-transitive verbs, compound objects, and the use of את with the subject of passives.

Bibliography

Malessa, Michael. Untersuchungen Zur Verbalen Valenz Im Biblischen Hebräisch. Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006.

A definiteness scale

Consider the set of sentences in example 1:

1 a. I went to see a doctor today.

1b. I went to see the doctor today.

1c. I went to see your doctor today.

1d. I went to see Dr. Brown today.

1e. I went to see that doctor today.

1f. I went to see her today.

All of the highlighted phrases share the same referent, but notice that there are many more choices for referring expressions beyond indefinite and definite.  This is because these other types of expression also align with definiteness.

While the binary indefinite-definite opposition can be used to code the basic distinction between identifiable and unidentifiable referents, these other types of noun phrases can be used to code other points on the scale in the form of an implication hierarchy. Sticking with Prince’s identifiability scale, a general definiteness hierarchy can be proposed such as 2:

(2)	evoked >	unused >	inferable >	brand new >
	pronoun demonstrative	proper noun	definite noun phrase possessive phrase	indefinite noun phrase

On an implication hierarchy, if a form can be used for one point on the scale, this implies that it can also be used for any higher point on the scale. On the other hand, conversational implicature suggests that if their is a more informative grammatical form for a higher point on the scale, this will be used instead. This tends to limit a particular form to a particular range on the scale, though there can also be reasons for over- or under-specifying a discourse referent.

Personal and demonstrative pronouns are usually taken to be highest on the scale because they refer directly and always express evoked referents. Pronouns can refer either through anaphora, which Prince labels textually evoked, or deixis, in which case the referent is situationally evoked. Demonstratives can also function as determiners when used together with a noun phrase. They can be either deictic (Look at that guy!) or anaphoric (I read that article too.).

Proper nouns also refer directly and are therefore considered to be uniquely identifiable as in Russell’s analysis. Certainly proper nouns can be ambiguous, ie “John Smith”, but unmodified proper nouns tend only to be used to introduce a discourse referent if it is one that the hearer is assumed to be familiar with, and therefore they correlate to the unused category.

Noun phrases marked with the definite article generally cover all discourse referents that can be considered identifiable. Definite noun phrases that are co-referential to an already introduced discourse referent are anaphoric and can be considered textually evoked as in 3:

(3) The neighbor’s dog got out last night. The cur knocked over our garbage cans.

More complicated is the case of first-mention definite noun phrases. In some situations a definite article can function similarly to a demonstrative as in 4 (assuming that a hammer is present in the immediate situation):

(4) Pass me the hammer please.

In this case the definite phrase could be considered situationally evoked. Definites which have unique referents within the relevant social context are comparable to proper nouns and correlate to the unused category. Examples include the sun, the president, the river, etc.  However, most first-mention definites are inferables as I discussed in the last post (like the driver).

Possessives are a more complicated case which I will discuss in my next post. Usually, however, they can be considered an inferrable that includes its anchor.

Additional Bibliography

Fraurud, Kari. “Definiteness and the processing of NPs in natural discourse.” Journal of Semantics 7 (1990): 395-433.

The identifiability scale

In my last post, I noted that the choice between “a car” and “the car” has to do with the assumption of whether the particular car is identifiable by the hearer. Thus the use of an indefinite phrase tips the hearer that they need to create a new “record”, while the definite noun phrase causes them to search for an existing record in their mental database.

However, identifying a referent is not always as simple as whether a record exists or not. Though some modify it slightly, the identifiability scale suggested by Ellen Prince remains the starting point for most studies (see also Gundel, et al for a more complicated scale). Prince multiplies the given-new distinction into four basic categories similar to 1:

(1) evoked > unused > inferable > brand new

An evoked discourse referent correlates basically to a given status. It has either been mentioned already or is self-evident from the extra-linguistic situation and can therefore be referred to through anaphora or deixis. For instance, if we are standing in a museum looking at a painting, I might say, “I like the painting.” I don’t need to introduce the painting into the discourse, but can evoke it directly.

On the other end of the scale, brand new discourse referents correspond to what is normally termed new information since they are unfamiliar to the hearer before being mentioned in the discourse. Brand new referents can be made slightly more identifiable by anchoring them. For instance, I might say, “a man I work with” instead of just “a man”.

The middle categories cover referents which have not been introduced into the discourse, but are identifiable based on the hearer’s broader knowledge, so-called first-mention definites. An unused referent is new to the discourse, but it is already familiar to the receiver. This can also be termed discourse-new and hearer-old information. Rather than creating a new referent from scratch, the existing record can be copied from long-term storage directly into the discourse model, along with any existing attributes or links. For instance, take sentence 2:

(2) I went down to the river yesterday.

Presumably, there is only one prominent river within the relevant speech community so that it can be introduced with a definite noun phrase.

Inferrables deal with cases like the cover in my previous post. An entity is inferable “if the speaker assumes that the hearer can infer it via logical or plausible reasoning based on other evoked or inferable entities.” Thus, because it can be inferred that books have covers, there is no reason to introduce a cover as an indefinite noun with a third sentence. A more efficient discourse would be 3:

(3) I bought a book yesterday. The cover was torn.

Givón notes that this can also be called “double-grounding”, since it requires both association and anaphora, or “frame-based reference”. A frame is the set of general knowledge that can be connected to a particular entity or situation.  Often this type of reference is based on whole-part relations or possession as in the case of the book. However, Chafe also gives the example of a classroom which can be inferred to have a teacher, blackboard, and students, but can also be connected to things like homework, books, quizzes, etc., and all of these can be introduced with definites.

In this post I have continued to give examples with indefinite or definite noun phrases, but in my next post I will explore the options for tipping off the hearer more precisely as to where a referent falls on the identifiability scale.

Additional Bibliography

Givón, Talmy. Syntax: An Introduction. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2001.

Prince, Ellen. “Toward a Taxonomy of Given-New Information.” Pages 223-55 in Radical Pragmatics. Edited by Peter Cole. New York: Academic Press, 1981.

Prince, Ellen. “The ZPG Letter: Subjects, Definiteness, and Information-status.” Pages 295-325 in Discourse Description: Diverse Analyses of a Fund Raising Text. Edited by S. Thompson, and W. Mann. Philadelphia & Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1992.

Definiteness within Discourse

The idea of definiteness as a scalar rather than binary category comes from its correlation with identifiability. As mentioned in my previous post, identifiability has to do with the hearer’s ability to identify the referent of a particular expression. Thus the choice between “a car” and “the car” by a speaker has to do with their assumptions about whether this particular car can (or should) be identified by the hearer.

First, I need to introduce the concept of a discourse model. The processing of a text by the hearer can be conceptualized as the creation of a temporary discourse model in the hearer’s mind.  This can be conceived of as a relational database consisting of the discourse referents represented by noun phrases in the text (Heim actually uses the analogy of file cards, but I took the liberty to update it a bit). Discourse referents can be individuals, classes, concepts, etc, and can be given attributes and links to other discourse referents based on the information in the text.

So, for instance, in our car example the hearer would have a discourse referent labeled Car to which they could add the attribute that it was bought by me. There can also be a link to me, since I am another discourse referent, with the attribute that I bought the car.

Referent:	Pete	Car
Attribute:	bought car	bought by Pete
Links:	Car	Pete

The most important clue to a hearer when processing a noun phrase in a text is whether they should create a new record for the discourse referent or find an existing record to update. This distinction between new referents and old referents is also termed givenness, expressed as a distinction between given and new information. Irene Heim noted that there is a basic relationship here with definiteness. An indefinite noun phrase triggers the creation of a new discourse referent, while a definite noun phrase usually implies that a discourse referent is given.

So, if the car is unfamiliar to my hearer, then I introduce it as an indefinite, but if I want to refer to it again later I switch to a definite phase to tip the hearer that they already have a record created as in 1:

(1) I bought a car today…. The car is a metallic black color.

The Car record can now be updated with the attribute metallic black.

This view of definiteness tends to highlight the anaphoric use of definiteness – the car is identifiable because it was mentioned previously. However, if identifiability was only a binary category, we would have discourses such as in 2 (from Prince and Walker):

(2) I bought a book yesterday. The book had a cover. The cover was torn.

This sequence feels redundant because it seems likely that the speaker can assume that the hearer knows that books have covers, thus it violates Grice’s Maxim of Quantity:

1. Make your contribution to the conversation as informative as necessary.
2. Do not make your contribution to the conversation more informative than necessary.

However, this sort of general and situational knowledge – that books have covers – is not captured in the basic given-new or definite-indefinite distinctions. Therefore, in my next post I will look at the idea of an identifiability scale and how definiteness can also be considered a scalar.

Additional Bibliography

Heim, Irene. “File Change Semantics and the Familiarity Theory of Definiteness.” Pages 164-89 in Meaning, Use, and the Interpretation of Language. Edited by R. Bauerle, C. Schwarze, and A. von Stechow. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1983.

Kartunnen, Lauri. “Discourse Referents.” Pages 363-85 in Syntax and Semantics 7: Notes from the Linguistic Underground. Edited by J. McCawley. New York: Academic Press, 1976.

Lambrecht, Knud. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Walker, Marilyn, and Ellen Prince. “A Bilateral Approach to Givenness: A Hearer-Status Algorithm and a Centering Algorithm.” Pages 291-306 in Reference and Referent Accessibility. Edited by Thorstein Fretheim, and Jeanette K. Gundel. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1996.

More definiteness – the familiarity approach

As I mentioned in my last post, in studying definiteness, logical and semantic approaches tend to concentrate on issues such as existence and uniqueness and the truth or falsehood of a proposition in the real world. Discourse approaches, however, have been more interested in the pragmatics of definiteness, particularly the dynamic between the speaker and the hearer. For instance, I began my last post with the following pair of sentences:

(1a) I bought the car today.

(1b) I bought a car today.

Russell was primarily concerned with naming expressions such as “The King of France” or “Mr Jones” which have only one possible referent, but the expression “the car” in the sentence above can have an almost limitless number of possible referents. On the other hand, in the context, the phrases “the car” and “a car” have the same unique referent. What influences the choice of one phrase over the other?

The familiarity theory is usually traced to Paul Christophersen, who argued that the distinction between definite and indefinite noun phrases has to do with whether the hearer was presumed to be acquainted with the referent. Thus the difference between the two sentences in example 1 is that the car under discussion is known to the hearer in the first, but not in the second.

Note that Chafe has suggested that the term identifiability is preferable to familiarity. The distinction is that the hearer may not necessarily know the referent, but definiteness signals that they are in a position to identify it. Identifiability can be related to the prior introduction of a referent in the discourse (anaphora), the presence of the referent in the immediate situation (deixis), or the general knowledge of the hearer.

However, identifiability may not always be an adequate explanation of definiteness either. Lyons notes that so-called associative uses are the most problematic. In the associative use, a noun phrase is considered definite by its relation to a previous referent as in 2:

(2) I took a taxi to the airport, but the driver got lost.

Here it is understood that the driver is connected to the previously mentioned taxi. However, other than linking him to the taxi, the hearer is in no position to identify the particular driver. In such a case, definiteness may indeed be more about quantification than identifiability. That is, the sentence merely expresses that the taxi had a driver.

Fraurud has suggested, however, that the individuation of the referent may also be a factor. The identifiability approach tends to treat individuals as the prototypical referent, but individuals are identifiable in a different way from other kinds of entities such as classes and types, of which we may have general-lexical, but not personal, knowledge. Thus all that is necessary is to identify the driver as the taxi driver (there will be more on this in a future post).

Identifiability seems to be the prototypical use of definiteness cross-linguistically, and therefore, Lyons suggests that in general definiteness grammaticalizes this pragmatic category.  In fact, in the majority of cases, definite articles develop from demonstratives. However, it is reasonable to assume that over time in some languages the category of definiteness could be extended to other related uses such as inclusiveness as we saw earlier with plural and mass nouns. In this regard, it is interesting to note that indefinite articles tend to develop after definite articles from quantifiers such as one.

Additional Bibliography

Chafe, Wallace. “Givenness, Contrastiveness, Definiteness, Subjects, Topics, and Point of View.” Pages 25-55 in Subject and Topic. Edited by Charles N. Li. New York: Academic Press, 1976.

Christophersen, Paul. The Articles: A Study of Their Theory and Use in English. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1939.

Fraurud, Kari. “Cognitive Ontology and NP Form.” Pages 65-88 in Reference and Referent Accessibility. Edited by Thorstein Fretheim, and Jeanette K. Gundel. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1996.

A closer look at definiteness – the uniqueness approach

In languages with the grammatical category of definiteness, the prototypical definite noun phrase is one marked with the definite article. This is usually contrasted with an indefinite article or bare noun phrase such as in example 1:

(1a) I bought the car today.

(1b) I bought a car today.

Explanations for the various uses of the definite article are complex, and the subject has attracted the attention of philosophers and logicians besides linguists and grammarians. The two most common explanations are the uniqueness and familiarity theories.

The uniqueness theory has its roots in the logical tradition and is usually traced to Bertrand Russell, who argued that the definite article requires existence and uniqueness as in example 2:

(2) The King of France is bald.

According to Russell this sentence implies three things:

(i) There is a King of France.

(ii) There is only one King of France.

(iii) This individual is bald.

Thus the use of the indefinite article, as in (i), merely asserts the existence of an individual meeting the description King of France, but the definite article also asserts his uniqueness.

Hawkins extended the uniqueness theory by arguing that the definite article actually expresses inclusiveness. His argument is that the referent of a definite description must be part of a shared set. In the case of an individual entity, it can be considered a singleton which is realized as uniqueness, but for plurals and mass nouns it includes everything that meets the description. For instance, consider the sentences in example 3:

(3a) We put the beer in the cooler.

(3b) We put beer in the cooler.

(3c) We put a beer in the cooler.

What is implied by sentence 3a is that all of the beer is now in the cooler. Here the difference between the definite, bare, and indefinite clearly has to do with quantification. Sentence 3b can be read as some beer was put in the cooler, while 3c implies that a certain unit of beer is meant.

In this approach, definite descriptions are not semantically referring, but only quantificational. This contrasts with proper nouns which have no “sense” but are merely pointers to the referent which they name. This follows Frege/Quine, and see also Saul Kripke on naming.

However, David McCawley pointed out exceptions such as example 4 that don’t seem to be explained by uniqueness or quantification:

(4) The dog got into a fight with another dog.

In this example there are two fighting dogs involved, but nothing particularly unique is expressed about the first dog. Therefore, David Lewis has argued that definiteness must relate to salience here rather than uniqueness, that is the first dog must be somehow more prominent in the discourse than the second.

One weakness of the uniqueness approach is that its logical roots were only concerned with the truth or falsehood of a statement, which should remain the same regardless of where or when it is expressed. Thus the approach only treats the noun phrase at the sentence level, rather than considering the larger discourse context. In contrast, discourse approaches tend to focus on the anaphoric use of definiteness, largely relying on the familiarity theory which I will summarize in the next post.

Bibliography

Hawkins, John A. Definiteness and Indefiniteness : A Study in Reference and Grammaticality Prediction. Atlantic Highlands, N.J: Croom Helm Humanities Press, 1978.

Kripke, Saul A. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1980.

Lewis, David. “Scorekeeping in a Language Game.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 8 (1979): 339-59.

Lyons, Christopher. Definiteness. Cambridge textbooks in linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

McCawley, David. “Presupposition and Discourse Structure.” Pages 371-88 in Syntax and Semantics 11: Presupposition. Edited by David Dinneen, and Choon-kyu Oh. New York: Academic Press, 1979.

Russell, Bertrand. “On Denoting.” Mind 14 (1905): 479-93.

Tense-switching in LBH

In my previous series of posts, one of my hesitations in applying tense-switching to biblical poetry was the assumption that the syntax of biblical narrative and poetry are somehow “synchronic”. The Hebrew found roughly in Genesis-Kings is referred to as Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH) or Standard Biblical Hebrew (SBH) and is generally assumed to be a formal literary southern urban (most likely Jerusalem) dialect. This is certainly not proven beyond a doubt, but while other  dialects may creep in depending upon the source of the text or the purpose of the author, the dialect across these books seems highly standardized. One of the standard features is the consistent use of verbal morphology combined with word order, what Niccacci terms tense-switching, to indicate tense/aspect and prominence.

Even within SBH, the system begins to break down a bit as we move from narrative proper to direct speech, but what happens when we move completely away from SBH to another dialect, such as Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH)? Jan Joosten has a helpful article (“The Disappearance of Iterative WEQATAL in the Biblical Hebrew Verbal system,” Pages 135 – 147 in Biblical Hebrew in its Northwest Semitic Setting, Eisenbrauns, 2006) in which he argues that, while still used as a future/modal, the past iterative function of weqatal has all but disappeared in LBH and is being replaced by weyiqtol. 

For instance, notice the chain of weyiqtols in 2 Chr 24:11 where we would expect weqatal:

2Chr 24:11 וַיְהִ֡י בְּעֵת֩ יָבִ֨יא אֶת־הָֽאָר֜וֹן אֶל־פְּקֻדַּ֣ת הַמֶּלֶךְ֮ בְּיַ֣ד הַלְוִיִּם֒ וְכִרְאוֹתָ֞ם כִּי־רַ֣ב הַכֶּ֗סֶף וּבָ֨א סוֹפֵ֤ר הַמֶּ֙לֶךְ֙ וּפְקִיד֙ כֹּהֵ֣ן הָרֹ֔אשׁ וִיעָ֙רוּ֙ אֶת־הָ֣אָר֔וֹן וְיִשָּׂאֻ֖הוּ וִֽישִׁיבֻ֣הוּ אֶל־מְקֹמ֑וֹ כֹּ֤ה עָשׂוּ֙ לְי֣וֹם ׀ בְּי֔וֹם וַיַּֽאַסְפוּ־כֶ֖סֶף לָרֹֽב׃12 וַיִּתְּנֵ֨הוּ הַמֶּ֜לֶךְ וִֽיהוֹיָדָ֗ע אֶל־עוֹשֵׂה֙ מְלֶ֙אכֶת֙ עֲבוֹדַ֣ת בֵּית־יְהוָ֔ה 

11 And when the chest would be brought to the king’s officers by the Levites, when they saw that there was much money in it, the king’s secretary and the officer of the chief priest would come and would empty the chest (weyiqtol) and would take it (weyiqtol) and would return it (weyiqtol) to its place. Thus they did day after day, and they collected money in abundance. 12 And the king and Jehoiada gave it to those who had charge of the work of the house of the LORD…

Joosten notes that it is possible that these are wayyiqtol‘s which have been mispointed, since in Kings we do have examples of weqatal followed by wayyiqtol as an iterative (in fact, such a construction is in the similar account in 2 Kg 12:11). However, usually the Masoretes mistakenly point weyiqtol as wayyiqtol, not the other way around. Further, the abundance of examples of weyiqtol as an iterative in LBH texts supports the pointing of the MT. 

This change seems to be part of a larger realignment of the verbal system as it moves toward Mishnaic Hebrew. The wayyiqtol form is gradually falling out of use, and if we look forward to the Isaiah Scroll from Qumran we see that the scribe consistently replaced wayyiqtol with a qatal form. Note also that the Isaiah scroll replaces iterative weqatal with weyiqtol. In LBH narrative, we already see weqatal (ie conjunctive waw + clause initial qatal) as a non-iterative past tense.  This is the normal narrative tense in Official Aramaic, which already dropped the wayyiqtol, and will become the narrative tense in Mishnaic Hebrew. For example, take Ezra 3:10:

Ezra 3:10 וְיִסְּד֥וּ הַבֹּנִ֖ים אֶת־הֵיכַ֣ל יְהוָ֑ה…

10 And the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord 

I think we can pull a few things from this. First, wayyiqtol is the special case. Most likely, the preterite was used clause initially in narrative contexts because this position is iconic for sequence, but it then became a frozen form so that the waw was reinterpreted as part of the verb, thus it is proper to speak of wayyiqtol as a verbal form. Obviously, there is no possibility of a non-clause-initial wayyiqtol. 

However, to speak of weqatal, x-qatal, weyiqtol, and x-yiqtol is to combine (and perhaps confuse) the semantics of the verbal morphology with the pragmatics of word-order. Here I agree with John Cook that wayyiqtol and weqatal should be seen as two separate things. The past iterative use of weqatal flows from the modality of the perfect, just as the past iterative use of x-yiqtol flows from the modality of yiqtol. Hence there is no problem with an iterative weyiqtol. The word-order has to do with whether the verbs are sequential or not. Both weqatal and weyiqtol are clause initial, thus iconic for sequence (note that I’m not saying marked for sequence). It seems to me that there is no reason why the classical dialect could not have used weyiqtol for foregrounded iterative action, it just chose weqatal as the standard form. This gives a nice symmetry to the system since x-yiqtol is used as past iterative in non-sequential circumstances, while x-qatal is reserved for circumstantial clauses. However, once the simple past use of weqatal begins to encroach, it makes sense to move to weyiqtol instead.

So, we see that the system of tense-switching doesn’t quite hold for LBH. It is not unreasonable to assume that similar differences would be found in dialects that differ geographically from SBH as well. For instance, northern dialects may be more influenced by Aramaic which did not use weqatal as an iterative either. Thus, while I agree that the syntax of poetry should not differ greatly from that of prose, we cannot assume that SBH is necessarily the prose dialect we should be using as a baseline reference.

OK, I swear I’m done with Niccacci now. Really.

DABHVSinP – Part 8: Conclusion

Sorry for the long delay, but I was pulled onto other projects at home (like caring for my wife who unexpectedly had to have her gall bladder removed). I could go on with this series forever, but I will try to wrap it up with this post. I am not completely satisfied with my findings, but I need to move on with my dissertation and get off of this rabbit trail.

In my last post I looked a bit at the way direct speech differs from biblical narrative in respect to tense-switching as a means for expressing grounding. The most obvious difference is that biblical narrative style uses a chain of syndetic clauses with very few explicit logical or temporal connectors. Thus tense-switching seems to be the predominate method of implying subordination. However, in the example of direct speech most of the clauses were asyndetic, the only exceptions being the couplets joined by parallelism and the use of the qatal > wayyiqtol shift to express subordination. As I turn my attention to poetry, it is parallelism that may be the biggest stumbling block for the usefulness of tense-switching as an explanation for the unique use of the verbal system.

Since Kugel’s work on parallelism, scholars have been more inclined to view poetry and prose as poles on a continuum. Kugel argued both that parallelism is not restricted to poetry and that a good amount of biblical poetry doesn’t use parallelism. He went on to argue against the standard distinction of a poetry corpus within biblical literature, but most scholars have not followed him that far. Still, it is important to recognize that prosaic elements exist within poems and vice versa. You may remember the use of parallelism integrated seamlessly into Jacob’s speech in the last post.

Thus, to the extent that a poetic text includes prosaic features, we would expect the syntax to work as it does in prose. Where a psalm is heavily influenced by narrative, as in Psalm 78, I think it is fitting to consider whether shifts from wayyiqtol to other verbal forms have a discourse-pragmatic function of expressing grounding. However, to me this seems to be a small % of texts and not extremely useful for explaining the verbal system in the psalms as a whole. And, even though a psalm like 78 is influenced by narrative, it is not exactly the same as narrative (even in direct speech). How do we account for the poetic features? Should we see a narrative framework with poetic features intruding, or a poetic passage with some wayyiqtols thrown in to give it a narrative feel?

Take a series such as Ps 78:14-15 (Niccacci’s translation):

14 וַיַּנְחֵ֣ם בֶּעָנָ֣ן יוֹמָ֑ם	and [He] led them with a cloud in the daytime,
וְכָל־הַ֝לַּ֗יְלָה בְּא֣וֹר אֵֽשׁ׃	And all the night with a fiery light.
15 יְבַקַּ֣ע צֻ֭רִים בַּמִּדְבָּ֑ר	By cleaving (‘ was cleaving’) rocks in the wilderness,
וַ֝יַּ֗שְׁקְ כִּתְהֹמ֥וֹת רַבָּֽה׃	he gave them drink abundantly as from the deep.

Niccacci sees the shift wayyiqtol > yiqtol from verse 14 to 15 as grounding, and he takes the yiqtol as past imperfective (I think this would be better translated as a past habitual: “He would cleave rocks in the wilderness and give them drink abundantly as from the deep.”) However, we would expect wayyiqtol > (waw)-x-yiqtol to signal a switch to past habitual, not a clause-initial yiqtol. Niccacci argues that here we do have x-yiqtol, but that a sentence initial pronoun has been dropped through ellipsis, thus poetry has intruded on the narrative. However, consider the sequence in verses 49-50:

49‏ יְשַׁלַּח־בָּ֨ם ׀ חֲר֬וֹן אַפּ֗וֹ	He let loose on them his burning anger,
עֶבְרָ֣ה וָזַ֣עַם וְצָרָ֑ה	wrath, indignation, and distress
מִ֝שְׁלַ֗חַת מַלְאֲכֵ֥י רָעִֽים׃	a troop of angels of disaster
‎50‏ יְפַלֵּ֥ס נָתִ֗יב לְאַ֫פּ֥וֹ	He made a path for his anger
לֹא־חָשַׂ֣ךְ מִמָּ֣וֶת נַפְשָׁ֑ם	He did not spare them from death
וְ֝חַיָּתָ֗ם לַדֶּ֥בֶר הִסְגִּֽיר׃	But their lives he handed over to the plague

Notice that both of these verses begin with initial yiqtols, but there is no tense-switch from or back to wayyiqtol for the foreground. Instead, the sequence is yiqtol (יְשַׁלַּח), yiqtol (יְפַלֵּ֥ס), qatal (לֹא־חָשַׂ֣ךְ), x-qatal (הִסְגִּֽיר). The temporal reference remains past tense during the entire section, and it is hard to see how the yiqtols can be taken as imperfective. Rather, we seem to have a yiqtol used as a simple past tense, which opens up the possibility that back in verse 15 יְבַקַּ֣ע was really just a simple past tense also. Thus, it could be that what we have there is not the poetic feature of ellipsis obscuring the normal narrative syntax of wayyiqtol > x-yiqtol indicating a switch to background information (which is a weak argument in the first place), but merely the use of a different, albeit rare, past tense form – the short preterite.

When we turn to look at the normal situation in poetry, parallelismus membrorum (see here), I think that this solution becomes more appealing. Nicholas Lunn has written a fine dissertation investigating word-order in biblical poetry. He found that the word order of the first colon, the a-colon, largely tends to follow the standard order (ie VSO, with the expected shifts for pragmatic reasons of topicalization or focus). However, the b-colon often deviates from this with an unexpected word-order. Lunn explains this with the concept of defamiliarisation. This is a device by which poets purposefully make language more difficult to understand in order to prolong the process of experiencing the art. This is evident not only in word-order, but also in the choice of rare words which seem to occur more frequently in the b-colon, and I would add, perhaps also rare verb forms such as the old short preterite. It is no coincidence then that the most common switch seems to be qatal > yiqtol, and not the opposite.

Further, the relationship between the cola in parallelismus membrorum is different than sequential clauses within a narrative or discourse where an idea is developing progressively. Often, the point of a b-colon is to stop and repeat the same idea using synonymous (or antithetical) language. In such a situation, I don’t know that it is proper to think of one clause as being subordinate to the other. take for example Psalm 78:5:

5‏ וַיָּ֤קֶם עֵד֨וּת ׀ בְּֽיַעֲקֹ֗ב	And he established a testimony in Jacob
וְתוֹרָה֮ שָׂ֤ם בְּיִשְׂרָ֫אֵ֥ל	And a law he appointed in Israel.

Here both cola refer to the same event, but the merismus ”Jacob and Israel” has been split and expanded into two cola (which is a common feature of biblical poetry). Therefore, the switch from wayyiqtol to qatal probably should not be taken as a signal of background or subordination, but a by-product of the insertion of parallelism into the flow of thought. This happens in narrative texts as well, take Gen 21:1:

21:1‏ וַֽיהוָ֛ה פָּקַ֥ד אֶת־שָׂרָ֖ה כַּאֲשֶׁ֣ר אָמָ֑ר	And the Lord visited Sarah as He said
וַיַּ֧עַשׂ יְהוָ֛ה לְשָׂרָ֖ה כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר דִּבֵּֽר׃	And he did to Sarah as He spoke.

The next verse picks up again with a wayyiqtol and continues the narrative. Another reason why I don’t think tense-switching between parallel cola should be taken pragmatically as a mark of backgrounding is the great number of parallel cola that do not switch tense at all. For example, Psalm 78:16:

16‏ וַיּוֹצִ֣א נוֹזְלִ֣ים מִסָּ֑לַע	He caused streams to come out of the rock
וַיּ֖וֹרֶד כַּנְּהָר֣וֹת מָֽיִם	and he caused water to flow down like rivers.

Here we have synonymous parallelism, but both cola use wayyiqtols. I can see no difference in the context between the function of parallelism here and elsewhere, but perhaps I am missing something.

In conclusion then, it seems to me that tense-switching as a mark of background ultimately fails to add to our understanding of the use of the verb in poetry. Rather, I think the majority of cases of a switch from qatal > yiqtol can be explained by defamiliarisation. That is, the poet has used a rare preterite form for the b-colon to make it bit more difficult to understand. I do think Niccacci is right to be more sensitive to the past imperfective use of yiqtol, especially in narrative-like contexts. There are some cases where I agree that a past habitual may be a better translation than simple past, and from a quick scan of the Psalms I see many examples where yiqtol is used in obviously past imperfective situations. For example, Ps 39:4:

4‏ חַם־לִבִּ֨י ׀ בְּקִרְבִּ֗י	My heart became hot within me
בַּהֲגִיגִ֥י תִבְעַר־אֵ֑שׁ	While I mused, fire was burning
דִּ֝בַּ֗רְתִּי בִּלְשֽׁוֹנִי׃	I spoke with my tongue

Again, note that we do not have any of the standard tense-switching constructions here as the other verbs are both clause-initial qatals. In poetry then, I think that we must be more sensitive to the semantics of the verb on its own, rather than expecting the elegant system found in narrative where we can rely on the word-order.