Abstract
The Amarna letters from Canaan (ca. the middle of the fourteenth century B.C.E.) contain several passages which employ the yaqtul forms in the narrative. These passages attest to the existence of the short prefix conjugation in contemporaneous Canaanite dialects. This conclusion is based on the close similarity of their syntax to the Biblical Hebrew wayyiqtol.
Highlights
If there is anything absolutely certain in the historical understanding of the Semitic verbal system, it is the reconstruction of a short prefixed form with the perfective meaning, used typically as the past tense in the indicative and as the directivevolitive form. Such an understanding is based on the existence and uses of the parallel forms of the short prefix conjugation in two major branches of the Semitic family: in East Semitic—the Preterite iprus and the Precative liprus; in West Semitic—various reflexes of the yaqtul conjugation, the Biblical Hebrew wayyiqtol
In the Canaanite dialects, at the stage documented by the Amarna letters, the preterite meaning of the prefixed conjugation was marked by the zero ending, while the conjunction wa overtly marked the events expressed by the yaqtul forms as forming a sequential narrative chain
The texts presented above have been neglected in the discussion of the historical development of the West Semitic verbal system, in particular about the Biblical Hebrew wayyiqtol
Summary
If there is anything absolutely certain in the historical understanding of the Semitic verbal system, it is the reconstruction of a short prefixed form with the perfective meaning, used typically as the past tense in the indicative and as the directivevolitive form. Such an understanding is based on the existence and uses of the parallel forms of the short prefix conjugation in two major branches of the Semitic family: in East Semitic—the Preterite iprus and the Precative liprus; in West Semitic—various reflexes of the yaqtul conjugation, the Biblical Hebrew wayyiqtol.. In relation to wayyiqtol and the use of the Preterite yiqtol without the conjunction wə in the Hebrew Bible, two questions remain without a satisfactory answer: what the evidence for the
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