Alt oder spät? (Teil 1)
Die Abfolge wa-Perfekt als Element der althebräischen Verbalsyntax im Kontext des nordwestsemitischen Verbalsystems. Eine Problemanzeige aus der Perspektive der nordwestsemitischen Epigraphik.
Theologische Fakultät
This paper discusses the usage of the sequence wa-perfect (conjunction wa- immediately followed by perfect / suffix conjugation) in Ancient Hebrew. While in biblical literary prose this »tense« is understood in the classical system as consecutive perfect – functionally identical (as allomorph) to imperfect (long form: yaqtulu) and other imperfective constructions – in Epigraphic Hebrew there are some cases where wa-perfect has to be understood as perfective and past time tense. This result is consistent with the fact that in Pre-Hebrew Canaanite as in contemporary Phoenician and Aramaic wa-perfect is simultaneously used for past time narratives as also for the apodosis of conditional sentences with inherent future meaning – often in the same corpus. Nevertheless wa-perfect is never functionally identical with Hebrew wayyiqtol which in Epigraphic Hebrew clearly denotes progress. The usage of wa-perfect and other tenses in the North-West-Semitic languages including Epigraphic Hebrew shows the well known fact that the decision for a specific tense is determined not only by aspect, time (including progress or regress), and mood etc., but especially also to denote highlighting (foreground and background), the beginning or ending of a sequence, to realize special stylistic features and after all by the type of the literature: poetry, literary prose or administrative prose.
Dateien zu dieser Publikation
Anmerkungen
Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG-geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.