Fwd: Complexity

A. Katz amnfn at well.com
Fri Mar 18 14:41:31 UTC 2011


I agree.

    --Aya


On Fri, 18 Mar 2011, john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:

> But this is another example of how it isn't clear what it means to be
> 'more complex'. The Biblical Hebrew tense/aspect system distinguished
> between verbal forms which have almost completely fallen together
> morphologically but maintained radically different functions (not
> just the 'imperfect' but also the 'perfect') by having one occur only
> in clause-initial position prefixed with va- (and) and the other
> occur only in non-clause-initial position. As someone who has worked
> with this language a lot and gotten used to it, it isn't at all
> clear to me that this system is more complex than the one that
> preceded it. More typologically unusual, certainly. But why is it
> more 'complex' to make a distinction by prefixing a conjunction than
> by suffixing an agreement/tense-aspect marker?
> John
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> Quoting Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>:
>
>>
>>
>> I am forwarding a note from A. Gianto, SJ, a noted Semiticist.  He is
>> not on the list but I think his post is relevant.  TG
>>
>> ============================
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> Subject: 	Complexity
>> Date: 	Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:35:20 +0100
>> From: 	A.Gianto <gianto at biblico.it>
>> To: 	Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>
>>
>>
>>
>> The TAM system in Biblical Hebrew (BH) is a good example of a
>> grammaticalization process that adds complexity to a previous system,
>> Aramaic, though stemming from the same system as BH, took the opposite path.
>>
>>
>>
>> The development of the "prefix conjugation" in BH (generally called
>> "imperfect, yixtov 'he writes'; cf. Arabic yaktub-u) is a strategy to handle
>> the confusion resulting from the loss of final short vowels /a,i,u/ at the
>> end of a word in a previous stage. Comparative evidence (cf. Arabic) suggests
>> that the prefix conjugation in this earlier stage had at least four forms,
>> i.e, 3masc. sg.  imperfect: yaktub-u, narrative yaktub-ר (=zero); jussive:
>> yaktub-ר, optative yaktub-a. (The narrrative and jussive have the same form
>> but they have a complementary distribution.) When the final short vowels
>> dropped, the forms risk to get confused with one another and their special
>> use got compromised.  In Hebrew, yixtov<  *yaktub<  *yaktub-u was generalized
>> as the imperfect form in BH. This is a grammaticalization process that
>> introduces complexity rather than simplifying the situation. But the story
>> goes on. The narrative yaktub-ר, however, still looked very much like the
>> imperfect. To deal with this, BH only allows the narrative yaktub-ר to stand
>> in the first-position - and to "seal" this constraint, a conjunction wa- was
>> prefixed to it, hence the form wayyiqtol ("converted imperfect") is always
>> clause initial.
>>
>>
>>
>> The old optative yaktub-a took another path. When the final vowel -a was
>> dropped, it became yaktub, making it too similar to the imperfect. The
>> strategy taken is interesting. The optative paradigm gave up its 2nd and 3rd
>> persons. But the sg and pl of 1st persons got stabilized into what BH grammar
>> calls "cohortative" 'ektva: and nektva: 'I/we wish to write'.
>>
>>
>>
>> At the beginning Aramaic took a similar path, i.e, generalizing the old
>> imperfect into just one form yixtuv<  *yaktub<  *yaktub-u. The old narrative
>> *yaktub disappeared and its function was taken over by the so-called
>> narrative participle. Unlike BH, the old optative formally did not survive
>> and the category became no longer operative in Aramaic. All kinds of wish are
>> now expressed either by the imperfect or jussive.
>>
>>
>>
>> The skeletal picture above shows how two closely related languages like BH
>> and Aramaic took opposite paths. BH opted for an ever complex
>> grammaticalization, Aramaic, so to speak, reduced the grammaticalization
>> process to the basics.
>>
>> Gus
>>
>>
>>
>>
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