# Development of the Semitic Conjugation System



## effeundici

*Mod note:
Split off from the thread about "to be/to have" as the imperfective-jussive discussion should be kept separate.
*


Arabus said:


> The Jewish God speaks Hebrew, the Christian God speaks Aramaic, and the Muslim God speaks Arabic; so excuse me, but there is no way on earth that God says anything cannot be said in Semitic.
> 
> Tell me where this is in the Bible and I'll tell you what God said.


 

*Exodus 3:14 (New International Version)*


*14* God said to Moses, "*I am who I am* . [a] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: *'I AM* has sent me to you.' "

How do you express the bold sentence? obviously this is a grammar question;we are not talking about religion


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## Arabus

This is easy. I am not going to use perfect transcription anymore, the sentence in Hebrew is _"wa-yomer elohim el moshe, ehye asher ehye, wa-yomer, koh tomar li-bne yisra'el ehye shelahani alekhem"_

This is an old Hebrew style that is similar to Arabic, he's literally saying _"and God said to Moses, I shall be that (who) I shall be, and he said, thus shalt thou say to the sons of Israel, I shall be (whom) he sent me to ye_."

He is using the imperfect of be _yihye_ (Arabic _yakuunu_) in the present tense; this is usual in Arabic when the sentence has a declarative tone (such as this one). Compare the English sentence _"the wetter the road conditions, the harder it will be for a vehicle to stop". _The second verb in this sentence isn't really a future tense but it is used to confer a declarative tone.


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## WadiH

effeundici said:


> *Exodus 3:14 (New International Version)*
> 
> 
> *14* God said to Moses, "*I am who I am* . [a] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: *'I AM* has sent me to you.' "
> 
> How do you express the bold sentence? obviously this is a grammar question;we are not talking about religion



Well the first one is easy: "قال الإله لموسى أنا أكون من أكون" (qaalal ilaahu limuusa *anaa akuun man akuun*) or "أنا من أنا" (*anaa man anaa*).

The second bolded statement can be translated as أكون (akuun), كنت (kunt), or أنا كائن (anaa kaa2in).


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## berndf

effeundici said:


> *Exodus 3:14 (New International Version)*





effeundici said:


> *14* God said to Moses, "*I am who I am* . [a] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: *'I AM* has sent me to you.' "
> 
> How do you express the bold sentence? obviously this is a grammar question;we are not talking about religion


"ויאמר אלהים אל־משה אהיה אשר אהיה ויאמר כה תאמר לבני ישראל אהיה שלחני אליכם׃"

"And-will-speak God to-Moses: I-will-be who I-will-be and-he-will-speak thus thou-wilt speak to-children Israel I-will-be ??? (שלחניאליכם)". This is how far my Hebrew takes me without Niqqud (vowel signs) and a dictionary of Biblical Hebrew; I read "שלחניאליכם" as "tables to-you" but I doubt very much this is correct.

It has been said before, the problem is not the lack of the verb "to be". The problem is the lack of a present tense. Hebrew has only past and future*. In Biblical Hebrew, these two forms which European Semitologists call _perfect_ and _imperfect_ do not accurately correspond to tenses as we know them from European languages. They are at the same time tenses and aspects, expressing the static and progressive aspects**; hence the special form "ויאמר"="And-will-speak" as a narrative past: here the progressive aspect which is intended in narration outweighs the future tense meaning.
_______________________________
_*Modern Hebrew has a present tense which is constructed with a verbal adjective corresponding to our present participle. E.g. "I say" is "ani omer", literally "I saying", of course without a copula, i.e. "am"._
_**The imperfect had some now extinct sub-varieties but discussing them would be getting to far._



*PS:* I only now saw that Arabus already wrote most of what I had to say. But I leave it anyway; maybe one or two of the things I wrote might be helpful.
One note concerning Arabus explanations: The imperfect was never used to express present tense in Hebrew. I don't speak Arabic; but as I was told, this is different in Arabic.


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## Arabus

The root w-j-d (like Hebrew m-ṣ-ʔ) means "find," but it is secondarily used to denote existence like e.g. the French use of "trouver" in "se trouver."

 Meyer Wolfsheim, I think English is awesome, and its best quality is that it is easy to learn and use-- this is what you need in an international language. The only downside with English is the transcription system, which is barely phonetic and almost hieroglyphic.
​


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## Arabus

The Classical Arabic imperfective is mainly a "future tense" not a "present tense" (like in Hebrew and Aramaic), and it was recognized as such by the old grammarians. It was only in the modern vernaculars that the imperfective became mainly a "present tense" verb, and this is reflected in Modern Standard Arabic.

The verb be does not exist in the present. The imperfective _yakuunu _(as is Hebrew _yihye_) is always literally a "future tense." In Arabic, _yakuunu_ is often used in "the present" when the sentence has a declrative tone (like when stating a genral fact of life, etc. which is similar to English like the example I mentioned), and it seems to me that the Biblical Hebrew sentence used the verb the same way; Biblical Hebrew occasionaly retains archaic features similar to Arabic. Of course, the correct way describe all this would be by saying that the imperfective is just an imperfective but it has no tense_. _It was originally a subjunctive aorist and developed this tense-less situation in Proto-West-Semitic.


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## berndf

Arabus said:


> It was originally a subjunctive aorist and developed this tense-less situation in Proto-West-Semitic.


Biblical Hebrew still differentiated between the imperfect יהיה = "he will be" and the _jussive*_ יהי as in יהי אור = "there be light". The above mentioned narrative past was, by the way, constructed with the jussive variant of the imperfect: ויהי־אור = "and there was light".
___________________
_*The term used in most Hebrew grammar books written by European scolars._


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## WadiH

Arabus said:


> The Classical Arabic imperfective is mainly a "future tense" not a "present tense" (like in Hebrew and Aramaic), and it was recognized as such by the old grammarians. It was only in the modern vernaculars that the imperfective became mainly a "present tense" verb, and this is reflected in Modern Standard Arabic.
> 
> The verb be does not exist in the present. The imperfective _yakuunu _(as is Hebrew _yihye_) is always literally a "future tense." In Arabic, _yakuunu_ is often used in "the present" when the sentence has a declrative tone (like when stating a genral fact of life, etc. which is similar to English like the example I mentioned)



Why then does Classical Arabic modify this "future tense" with سـ or سوف when describing future events?


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## Arabus

berndf said:


> Biblical Hebrew still differentiated between the imperfect יהיה = "he will be" and the _jussive*_ יהי as in יהי אור = "there be light". The above mentioned narrative past was, by the way, constructed with the jussive variant of the imperfect: ויהי־אור = "and there was light".
> ___________________
> _*The term used in most Hebrew grammar books written by European scolars._



Yes. Something very fundamental in Semitic grammar that you should know is that the imperfective is always a jussive perfect after the "converting waw" in Hebrew (e.g. _wa-yomer elohim_ is always "God said" never "God will say") and after certain particles in Arabic, most importantly _lam _(e.g. _lam yakun_ is "was not"). Traces of the aorist meaning of the imperfective are found all over West Semitic, and this is why it is really tense-less because it can be any tense in most languages.


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## Arabus

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Why then does Classical Arabic modify this "future tense" with سـ or سوف when describing future events?



You mean "why then does Classical Arabic [commonly] modify this "future tense" with سـ or سوف when describing future events?"

The answer is simply disambiguation. Sawfa > sa- is used when the meant "future tense" of the imperfective is to be disambiguated, like when there is no time expression in the sentence etc.


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## berndf

Arabus said:


> Traces of the aorist meaning of the imperfective are found all over West Semitic, and this is why it is really tense-less because it can be any tense in most languages.


As I said, Biblical Hebrew (still?) distinuished morphologically between the two, imperfect and aorist/jussiv. What is not clear to me is whether this is a peculiarity of this development stage of Hebrew or whether this is a reflex of an originally more distinctive conjugation system. After all, Eastern Semitic (i.e. Akkadian) differentiated between aspect (static vs. dynamic) and mood (indicative vs. subjunctive).


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## Arabus

Yes. The morphological distinction existed in Proto-West-Semitic between the jussive (Proto-Semitic indicative aorist) and the imperfective (proto-Semitic subjunctive aorist). In Hebrew and Aramaic, the distinction is retained in weak verbs only, like the example of _yihye_ you mentioned. I exapanded what you said by noting that the jussive can exist in Hebrew without being morphologically marked, like _yomer _after a converting _waw_.


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## Arabus

If you are interested you can read Arabic grammar, because Arabic morphology is almost identical to Proto-Central-Semitic morphology (includes Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic-- the godly languages).


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## berndf

Arabus said:


> Yes. The morphological distinction existed in Proto-West-Semitic between the jussive (Proto-Semitic indicative aorist) and the imperfective (proto-Semitic subjunctive aorist).


I already wrote you a PM because I thought there was a typo in that post: The parantheses ought to be swapped. But you answered you meant it. Either we have different ideas here or/and there is a terminological confusion. A Jussive indicative is a contradiction in terms as the jussive by definition is a non-indicative form.


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## jdotjdot89

berndf said:


> Biblical Hebrew still differentiated between the imperfect יהיה = "he will be" and the _jussive*_ יהי as in יהי אור = "there be light". The above mentioned narrative past was, by the way, constructed with the jussive variant of the imperfect: ויהי־אור = "and there was light".
> ___________________
> _*The term used in most Hebrew grammar books written by European scolars._



Yes, but note that here with regard to "אהיה אשר אהיה" that there is no Hebrew jussive form for the first person.  Thus it is more ambiguous in the case of how exactly to translate אהיה.


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## berndf

jdotjdot89 said:


> Yes, but note that here with regard to "אהיה אשר אהיה" that there is no Hebrew jussive form for the first person. Thus it is more ambiguous in the case of how exactly to translate אהיה.


I understand this as an indicative imperfect.

(There is no jussive in 1st person but a cohortative which serves a similar purpose.)


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## WadiH

So do linguists recognize a 'narrative past' form in other Semitic languages (especially interested in Arabic) or is it seen as something specific to Hebrew?


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## Ectab

If Hebrew's using of the imperfect to describe past events in narrative is explainable by proto west Semitic development of proto Semitic perfect into imperfect, then what is an explanation to why Hebrew uses the perfect to describe future in narration? Wasn't the WS perfect originally a stative aspect in PS?

How did the stative aspect develop into narrative future in Hebrew? Is it related to Arabic's using of the perfect for wishing?


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