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5. Qal Internal Passive versus nifʿal Morphology

  • Aaron D. Hornkohl (author)
Chapter of: Diachronic Diversity in Classical Biblical Hebrew(pp. 107–126)

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Metadata
Title5. Qal Internal Passive versus nifʿal Morphology
ContributorAaron D. Hornkohl (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0433.05
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0433/chapters/10.11647/obp.0433.05
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightAaron D. Hornkohl
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-11-11
Long abstractThe broad move away from qal morphology to other stems included a shift away from qal internal passive morphology in favour of nifʿal morphology. This is clear in late forms of ancient Hebrew, biblical and extrabiblical, where qal internal passive forms are rare to non-existent. The process seems secondarily to have affected even early biblical texts, but only where the consonantal spelling was amenable to reinterpretation by means of the imposition of nifʿal pronunciation, which created many cases of artificial suppletion. While the nifʿal was by no means an innovation in Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH), its frequency there according to the Tiberian reading tradition does not align with its representation in the corresponding written tradition. The dissonance between the two traditions makes it difficult to perceive diachronic patterns in qal versus nifʿal usage in CBH, but by focusing on commonly used verbs, one can see the emergence of meaningful patterns. These arguably indicate a difference between the CBH of the Torah and the CBH of the relevant Prophets and Writings. They have mixed results as far as Source Theory is concerned.
Page rangepp. 107–126
Print length20 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Aaron D. Hornkohl

(author)
Associate Professor in Hebrew at University of Cambridge
https://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/people/dr-aaron-d-hornkohl

Aaron D. Hornkohl (PhD, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2012) is University Associate Professor in Hebrew, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on ancient Hebrew philology and linguistics, especially historical linguistics and ancient Hebrew periodisation; the components of the standard Tiberian Masoretic biblical tradition; and that tradition’s profile in the context of other biblical traditions and extrabiblical sources. This is his third single-author monograph after The Historical Depth of the Tiberian Reading Tradition of Biblical Hebrew (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2023) and Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Book of Jeremiah (Leiden: Brill 2014). He has also co-edited several volumes and written numerous articles.