Volume 46 Number 85
Produced: Tue Feb 8 5:47:33 EST 2005
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Grammar Question (5)
[Michael J. Savitz, Jay F Shachter, Joshua Hosseinof, Michael
J. Savitz, Martin Stern]
Grammar Question - accent on antepenultimate syllable
[Matthew Pearlman]
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From: Michael J. Savitz <michael.savitz@...>
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 11:21:51 -0500
Subject: Re: Grammar Question
Martin Stern <md.stern@...> wrote:
<<There are numerous examples in the in the first paragraph of the
Shema: ve'ahavta, veshinantam, vedibarta, ukeshartam, ukhetavtam, and
many more in the second and third paragraphs as well.
These all involve the vav consecutive, which changes the tense of the
verb by moving the stress. If these words are stressed incorrectly the
vav is copulative and leaves the tense unchanged.
e.g. VeshinanTAM = and you shall repeat them
VeshiNANtam = and you have repeated them>>
Not exactly. This is correct as to ve'ahavTA, vedibarTA, venataTI,
ve'asafTA, ve'achalTA, ve'amarTA, etc.; but not as to veshinanTAM,
uksharTAM, ukhtavTAM. These last 3 are past-tense-form verbs with the
letter mem as a suffix, denoting "them" as a direct object of the verb.
When a direct-object suffix is added, the accent is placed on the last
syllable, regardless of the presence or absence of the tense-changing
vav prefix. Cf. Vayikra 26:44 -- "lo m'asTIM velo g'alTIM" -- or
Bereshit 27:37 -- "hen gevir samTIV lach ... vedagan vetirosh
semachTIV". So "veshinanTAM" could mean either "you shall repeat them"
or "and you have repeated them", depending on context; but "veshiNANtam"
would be simply incorrect.
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From: Jay F Shachter <jay@...>
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 11:12:14 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: Grammar Question
One of the consequences of the Exile is that the language you speak
affects the way you think, so when we speak the languages of the goyim,
we adopt their manner of thought to a certain extent.
It is unfortunate, therefore, that a discussion of Hebrew verb tenses is
being conducted by native speakers of English. English speakers think
of verbs differently than Hebrew speakers do, or did.
English has more verb tenses than any other language I know. Look at
all these:
I sin
I sinned
I have sinned
I had sinned
I was sinning
I did sin
I do sin
I am sinning
I will sin
I will be sinning
I will have sinned
And that's just the indicative mood. English speakers make subtle
distinctions in the relationship of time to action that non-native
speakers of the language, in most cases, never completely learn.
For all that, though, there is no grammatical distinction in the English
language that corresponds to the distinction between the two forms of
the Hebrew verb (the so-called Hebrew "present tense" is clearly -- from
the way it inflects -- not a verb at all, but an adjective). The
distinction between the two Hebrew verb forms is probably best
understood not as a distinction of tense at all, but as a distinction of
aspect, such as one finds in Russian and other Slavic languages.
English, unfortunately, does not support such a distinction, which is
why native speakers of English have such difficulty learning when to say
"ya budu chitat" (which native speakers of Russian almost never say) and
"ya pochitayu".
Israelis, unfortunately, especially those who rule the country, are
mostly the children and grandchildren of people whose native languages
were Indo-European, and who therefore thought, and think, in the ways
engendered by those languages. The consequence is that Israelis have
been discarding authentic Semitic grammatical forms (like smikhut) and
replacing them with Indo-European forms. This is wrong, and it should
be resisted.
The mapping from English verb tenses to Hebrew verb aspects is
approximate, but it is a good approximation. Sometimes, however, the
mapping is not obvious to someone who thinks in English. Consider the
end of Genesis 44:32, which in English might be rendered, "... if I will
not return him to you, I will have sinned against my father all my
days".
How would you expect the idea "I will have sinned" to be expressed in
Hebrew, a language that offers only two forms of the verb -- "I will
sin" and "I have sinned"? It isn't obvious, at least not to me, a man
whose native language is English, so let's look at the Hebrew. The
Hebrew verb begins with a vav, but the accent is on the penultimate, not
on the ultima, which means that the author chose the form which in
English would be considered past tense: "if I will not return him to
you, I have sinned against my father all my days". If the accent had
been on the last syllable, the English rendering would have been future
tense, "if I will not return him to you, I will sin against my father
all my days".
I recommend that any further discussion of this topic be directed to
<heblang@...>, where it more properly belongs.
Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
Chicago IL 60645-4111
<jay@...>
http://m5.chi.il.us:8080
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From: Joshua Hosseinof <JHosseinof@...>
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 13:47:44 -0500
Subject: re: Grammar Question
Many people have mentioned the cases already where changing the accent
on the work changes it's meaning from past tense to future tense, but
there are other cases where changing the accent changes the meaning
completely. One example: Esther 2:14 the word "sha-VAH" means she
returned, but change it to "SHA-vah" means she captured. Another
example: Tehillim 102:15 or Yirmiahu 23:21 the word "ra-TZU" means they
wanted, but if it's pronounced "RA-tzu" it becomes they ran.
And while we're on the topic of grammar, let me throw in one more case -
pausing between words. In the first paragraph of Shema we have an
example "asher anochi metzavecha hayom al-levavecha" (that I command of
you today to place in your heart). There is a slight pause between
"hayom" and "al-levavecha", since the word "today" modifies "that which
I command of you". Without the pause, the meaning is changed to be
"place in your heart today, that which I command of you". In other
words, "hayom" is there to describe when hashem gave us the
commandments, not when we were supposed to place it in our hearts.
Every Sephardic siddur I have used has always had a small note
indicating the importance of pausing slightly here.
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From: Michael J. Savitz <michael.savitz@...>
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:14:15 -0500
Subject: Re: Grammar Question
Shayna Kravetz <skravetz@...> wrote:
<<And, by the way, while I'm bothering you all, I think all the examples
of vav ha-hipukh given here have been apparently past-tense verbs that
were transformed into future. But surely the vav can also flip future
into the past. The most obvious example is, of course, "Va-y'hi"
translated as "and it was". Is it just chance that all the examples are
past-into-future changes or is there a subtlety in biblical Hebrew
grammar that I'm missing?>>
It is not just chance. The shift of accent to the final syllable is a
distinguishing feature of the vav-hahipuch when it is used on a
past-tense-form verb (second person, or first person singular, i.e. the
accent shifts to the "-ta", "-tem" or "ti" suffix). When the
vav-hahipuch is used on a future-tense-form verb, the accent is
sometimes, but often not, shifted *from* the final syllable to the
penultimate syllable. (E.g. vayYOmer, vayYAkom, vayYAmot, vayYElech.)
The distinguishing feature of the vav-hahipuch on future-tense-form
verbs is that there is a patach under the vav, rather than a sheva or
chirik.
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From: Martin Stern <md.stern@...>
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 14:01:14 +0000
Subject: Re: Grammar Question
on 7/2/05 11:08 am, Shayna Kravetz <skravetz@...> wrote:
> And, by the way, while I'm bothering you all, I think all the examples
> of vav ha-hipukh given here have been apparently past-tense verbs that
> were transformed into future. But surely the vav can also flip future
> into the past. The most obvious example is, of course, "Va-y'hi"
> translated as "and it was". Is it just chance that all the examples are
> past-into-future changes or is there a subtlety in biblical Hebrew
> grammar that I'm missing?
The answer is "Yes". When the vav ha-hipukh is applied to the future
(strictly speaking imperfect) tense, it can be recognised by having a
patach rather than a sheva and, in most cases, a dagesh in the next
letter. The stress is also normally brought back, i.e. a milra' word
becomes mil'el - the reverse of what happens in the perfect, except in
(i) the first person singular (when the patach is lengthened to a
kamats) e.g. va'akIM (Amos 2.11), (ii) a pausal form e.g. vayochAL
(Ber.3.6), (iii) the niph'al e.g. vayikaVEIR (Dev. 10.6), (iv) when the
last syllable is open and ends in an alef e.g. vayeiTSEI (Ber 14.8), (v)
if the prefix is followed by a yud e.g. vayiRASH (Bam. 21.24).
As usual there are exceptions which illustrates the only infallible
meta-rule of Hebrew grammar "Every rule has an exception"!
Martin Stern
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From: Matthew Pearlman <Matthew.Pearlman@...>
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 14:25:01 -0000
Subject: Grammar Question - accent on antepenultimate syllable
Martin Stern stated "(but VeSHINantam is meaningless since Hebrew can
only have the primary stress on the last syllable (milra) or the
penultimate one (mil'el) never on any previous one)"
While this is true in general, there are a few exceptions, for example
tso'ara and ha'ohela in parashat Vayera where the accent is on the
antepenultimate syllable.
Both of these have the locative heh on an original word with the accent
on the penultimate syllable. I would be interested in any other
examples.
Matthew
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End of Volume 46 Issue 85
