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" The verbal system of biblical Aramaic: A distributional approach "
Michael B. Shepherd
J. H. Sailhamer
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Latin Dissertation
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English
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| Record Number
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54656
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| Doc. No
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TL24610
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3245272
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| Main Entry
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Michael B. Shepherd
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| Title & Author
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The verbal system of biblical Aramaic: A distributional approach\ Michael B. Shepherd
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| College
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Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
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| Date
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2006
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Ph.D.
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2006
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| Page No
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224
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| Abstract
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The title of this dissertation is "The Verbal System of Biblical Aramaic: A Distributional Approach." The thesis is that Biblical Aramaic has a primary verbal form for narration and a primary verbal form for discourse. The qtl form presents the foreground of narration, and the yqtl presents the foreground of discourse. The nominal clause with or without a participle is secondary; it presents the background of both narration and discourse. The traditional view of the verb is represented in the standard grammars by Emil Kautzsch, Hans Bauer and Pontus Leander, and Stanislav Segert. These works begin with the categories of tense (past, present, and future), aspect (how the action is viewed), and Aktionsart (the kind of action). The only significant departure from the traditional view is found in an article by H. B. Rosén. Rosén works with the same function-oriented categories, but he reassigns the labels. What is needed is a textlinguistic methodology---a linguistics that has for its object of study the text-immanent features of written language. Modern linguistics since Ferdinand de Saussure has focused on spoken, living language. But Biblical Aramaic is written, dead language. The study of formal distribution within texts written in what is now dead language has made an impact in Biblical Hebrew research through the contributions of Wolfgang Schneider and Wolfgang Richter, but Biblical Aramaic has not met with such an approach until now. The database employed here is an adaptation of an approach developed by John Sailhamer for the analysis of Biblical Hebrew narrative. Out of 435 clauses that contain some form of narration, 264 clauses have qtl as the primary verbal form, 26 have yqtl, and 145 are nominal clauses with or without a participle. Out of 208 clauses that contain either discourse or reported discourse, 110 clauses have yqtl as the primary verbal form, 28 have the imperative, and 70 are nominal clauses with or without a participle. This pattern from the database is paralleled in Egyptian Aramaic, the Aramaic of the Targums, and in Aramaic-influenced texts.
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| Subject
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Philosophy, religion and theology; Language, literature and linguistics; Aramaic; Biblical; Distributional analysis; Verbal system; Ancient languages; Bible; 0289:Ancient languages; 0321:Bible
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J. H. Sailhamer
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Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
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