The Waw-consecutive or Vav-consecutive is a grammatical construction in Classical Hebrew. It involves prefixing a verb form with the letter waw in order to change its aspect.
Contents |
This Hebrew prefix, spelled with the letter ו (waw) and depending on phonetic environment variously pronounced and transcribed wə-, wa- or u-, [n 1] is frequently a waw-conjunctive roughly equivalent to English and:
Used with verbs, the prefix has a double function. It is still conjunctive, but also has the effect of altering the tense and aspect of the verb. Weingreen gives the following example [1]. If we consider two simple past narrative statements, we expect to find them in the perfect tense:
Šāmar ('kept') and šāp̄aṭ ('judged') are simple perfect qal forms, and in fact they are the citation forms of these verbs. If however these two sentences are not separate but in one continuous narrative then only the first verb is in the perfect, whereas the following verb ('and he judged') is in the imperfect (yišpôṭ) with a prefixed waw:
Conversely, in a continuous narrative referring to the future, the narrative tense will be the imperfect, but this becomes a perfect after the conjunction:
Greatly over-simplified, we can say that Classical Hebrew has two inflected verb tenses, the perfect for past actions and the imperfect for actions continuing into the present or future. However the waw-consecutive perfect has future reference, and the waw-consecutive imperfect is a narrative past tense. Thus the construction has the general effect of reversing the polarity of the tenses. For this reason, early scholars referred to it as the waw-conversive, or in Hebrew waw hahipuch, literally "the waw of reversal". However, linguists do not believe that the conjunction itself can have a reversing effect. Rather, it is believed that Hebrew preserves remnants of two different early Semitic tense systems.
G. R. Driver writes:[2] "All attempts to explain this at first sight strange phenomenon, whereby two tenses apparently exchange functions, on logical grounds, have failed, but the historical development of the Hebrew language readily accounts for it. When it is remembered that this is a composite language containing elements drawn from all the Semitic languages, it is at once seen why it has two pronouns for the first person...[n 2] So there are two different systems, drawn from different sources, merged in the Hebrew scheme of tenses." On this view, the consecutive constructions are connected with the verb systems of East Semitic (Driver makes a comparison with Akkadian), whereas the ordinary verb construction reflects the usage in Northwest Semitic (Aramaic). The two have survived side-by-side in the Hebrew verb paradigm.
Vadim Cherny notes that waw reversive does not change tenses per se, but reflects deictic center shifts. Wayyomer (And + Future tense) can be approximated in English as, "And he would say," while weqatal refers to "prophetic past" - the events which, though future to the reader, are already past to the prophet in his vision. Weqatal is also employed for very strong commands.
Modern Hebrew makes little use of waw consecutive constructions, but they are still found in classical allusions and references, and are readily understood.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||