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On the autonomy of the tense paradigm: The modern Hebrew evidence
Lingua 51 (1980) 115-123 @ North-Holland PubIishing Company
ON THE AUTONOMY OF THE TENSE RN HEBREW EVIDENCE
Uniu. of Masscxhusetts, Judaic Studies, c/o Classics Dept., Amherst, USA
1. Although in traditional Hebrew linguistics there have been attempts to relate all verb conjugations to a single root, or to the first conjugation (pa‘al), it has also been acknowledged that each verb conjugation (binyan) is autonomous in many important ways. Recent generative accounts of Modern Hebrew phonology and morphology reassert the status of the b&van as a basic morphophonological domain - for example, Barkai (1973, where it is argued that application df morphophonemic rules should be restricted to binyanim displaying morphophonemic alternation, or Bolozky (in press), which points to the considerable amount of leveling taking place within a binyan, from one tense paradigm to another, In the latter account, however, it is shown that paradigmatic leveling and analogical extension are commonest in inflectional paradigms and the least likely in derivations, and that the likelihood of analogy could be looked at as a continuum extending from inflection par excellence to farfetched derivation, with many borderline, cases in between (e.g., almost automatic nominalizations of a particular hinyan). Obviously, the binyanim are inflections par excellence, but so are the sub-paradigms for each tense within a birzyan, and the question raised here is whether a tense paradigm can be justified as a morphophonological domain - without, of course, challenging the well-established autonomy of the whole binyan as a morphophonological unit. 2. One type of argumentation for the autonomy of tense paradigms involves morphological or morphophonemic rules that are either restricted
116
S. Bolozky 1 The autonomy of the tense paradigm
to tense paradigms or are excluded from them. There are numerous rules like that; only some representative cases will be cited here. Take, for instance, the rule of a-Raising, cited in Barkai (1975) and Balszky (1978), whereby a-+e/_._ + CV is restricted to the past and preq;ent paradi hif‘il conjugation, as shown below: (1)
Past hevim hekim herim
Present mevin mekim merim
Future yavin yakim yarim
‘ understand’ ‘found, establish’ ‘raise’
The rule does not apply anywhere else, although its structural description is found elsewhere in the present of the yi‘e1 and pu‘al conjugations. Another example: when underlying unsuffixed past forms (of any bitjyarl)end with /a/, the corresponding unsuffixed present and future forms will end with [e]: (2)
Past kana ni kna gila gula hitgala hikna hukna
Present kone nikne mega le megul e mitgale makne mukne
Future yikne yi kane yegale yegule yitgale yakne yukne
‘buy’ ‘ be bought’ ’ discover’ ‘ be discovered ’ ‘ appear ’ ‘cause to acquire’ ’ be acquired ’
And there are also cases where a rule is blocked in tense paradigms. For instance, in the Hebrew verb, stem-final /a/ and /e/, and possibly also /o/, are deleted before a stressed vowel that forms, or starts, the suffix, for example : (3)
katav kotev tedaber meda her yesudar hitIabeS
‘he wrote’ ‘he writes’ ‘you will speak’ ‘he speaks’ ‘it will be arranged’ ’ he dressed ’
N N
katvti kotvim tedabri meda 3r6t yesuc;rb hitlabSa
‘they ‘ they ‘you ‘they ‘ they ’ they
wrote’ write * (fem.) will speak’ (fem.) speak’ will be arranged ’ dressed ’
If deletion would yield a CCC sequence, the vowel in question is not deleted, but is reduced to [e] (or mamtained as such, if it is underlyingly so) : (4)
yixtov nixtav huxtav tuzlr&
‘he will write’ ‘it was written’ ‘it was dictated’ ‘you will be mentioned’
N N -
yixtevu nixteva huxtevti tuzkeri
‘they will write’ ‘it (fem.) was written’ ‘they were dictated’ ‘you (fem.) will be mentioned’
S. Bo~ozky/ The autonomy of the tense paradigm
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This rule is blocked, however, in the present of the nif‘al, pu’aE and huf ‘al
nixth
muxtzkv
‘it is accepted’ (rather than the ‘it is written’ (rather than the ‘it Is dictated’ (rather than the
mekubaf&t ‘they (fem.) are accepted’ expected *mekubl&) nixtavim ‘they are written” expected *nixtevim) muxtavim ‘they are dictated’ expected *muxtevim)
This note, however, will not concentrate on evidence from the scope of rule application, but rather on the interesting phenomenon of split paradigms in Modern Hebrew. Verbal paradigms tend to split along tense lines - as shown, for instance, in Hooper (1979). Like English go taking its past tense from Itpe&, Hebrew verbs sometimes have one or more of their tense paradigms realized with a morphologically-unrelated root. For instance, the common future counterpart of the pa’al forms ‘amar ‘he said, told’ and ‘o111er‘he says, tells’ is not the expected yomar, but rather the hif‘il form yagid, and the commonly used infinitival form is Zehagidrather than Zomar. yomar and Zomar are usually literary, or at least formal; higid, the expected past of yagid, is actually obsolete. Arabic has similar cases. As pointed out to me by George Saad, the commonly used imperative form corresponding to taraka ‘he left’ and yatruku ‘he leaves, will leave’ is not the expected ‘utruk, but rather da‘. The formal p*ast of da‘, wada‘a, is rarely used, and its imperfect counterpart, yada‘u, was already noted as obsolete in Sibawayhi’s eighth-century grammar. 3.2.
As a rule, however, Hebrew split paradigms tend to maintain the same root throughout the paradigm - only the binyan is split. Thus, the future counterpart of the pa‘al form yaxolta ‘you could ’ (or colloquial yaxalta) is the huf ‘al realization of the same root, tuxal ‘you will be able’. The corresponding pa‘al future or huf ‘al past forms do not exist. Similarly, the nif‘al form nigas’ ‘ he approached, approaches ’ has a pa‘al future realization, yigas’; there exist no corresponding nzy‘al future or pa’al past. In other cases, the corresponding forms do exist, but are either almost obsolete, or
118
S. Bolozky 1 Tile autonomy of the tense paradigm
strictly literary, and in any event less common than the other forms reported. Thus, the future of pi‘el ‘era‘ ‘it occurred’ is pa‘al ye’era‘, and the expected pi’el future ye’ara‘ is extremely literary and for all practical purposes obsolete. The future of pa‘al naf% ‘he rested, took a vacation ’ is either n(f ‘al yinafeS, or pa‘al yafus’(which involves the reotjk.8 rather than n,f.J’), or a periphrastic verb phrase avoiding this verb altogether (since both yinafes and yafus’ sound literary); the expected past counterparts of yhqfes and yafuS, i.e., uipas’and pa$ respectively, are obsolete. The past of pn’al yafuc ‘it will scatter’ is nly’al nafoc ‘it scattered ‘. Pa’alpac and rt~j”al yipoc, respectively, are never heard. A more common split paradigm is that of pi’41 mefaxed ‘he is afraid’ and yefaxed ‘he will be afraid’ with the past of the same root in pa‘al: paxan ‘he was afraid ‘. The pi‘el past pi_& is never used in Modern Hebrew, except sporadically in child analo pa’al itself, however, the present and future of pax&, i.e., poxed ‘he is afraid’ and y$xad ‘he will be afraid’, respectively, do exist alongside with pi‘el’s mefaxed and yefaxed. In other words, the paradigm is split insofar as pi’cl is concerned, but not with respect to pa’al. In fact, this asymmetry, where one hillyan is intact, but in part also serves to complement a tensegap in another binyan, is quite common. For instance, one finds /Cj“i/ hi.Cmh ‘he became fat ‘, mahuh ‘he is becoming fat ‘, yaGk ‘he will become fat’ - but in ya‘al, only sirman ‘he became fat’ is used, complemented in the future by h[f‘i/ ya.bmil rather than by pa‘al yi.Gnan, which is obsolete. Similarly, we have the whole hitpa’el paradigm in hitbager ‘he matured’, mithager ‘he matures’, yitbager ‘he will mature’ - but only hcrgcrr‘he matured’ in pa’al. The corresponding pa‘al future, yirgor’, is never used. ho’ofam ‘he was accused’, mo’oSam ‘he is accused’ and yo’osIcTm‘ he will be accused’ are all in huf ‘al; @al ne’es’am ‘ he was accused’ is normally complemented in the future by huf ‘al yo’o.G-m, since ye’aJ’em, the nif ‘al future, is obsolete. The same holds for ho‘orac ‘he was admired’, mo‘orac ‘he is admired’ and yo‘orac ‘he will be admired’ - and nif’al ue‘erac ‘he was admired ‘, whose future counterpart, ye‘arec, is rarely used. Another example : yised ‘ he established ‘, nle~C~sec( ‘ he is establishing’, yeyascd ‘he will establish’ - all in pi‘el. The future of pa’al yasad ‘he established’ is normally yeJ?ased, since the expected pa’al future, yisad, is obsolete. 3.3. There also exist cases of tense paradigms that do not have counterparts in any b’iilyan. nicau ‘he stood/stands motionless’ is a nly’al form that exists
S. Bolozky/ The atctonomyof the tenseparadigm
119
in the past and present only, and cannot be said to have a precise future counterpart anywhere. But to the best of my knowledge, there are not many of those.
The existence of split paradigms is not as arbitrary as it might seem. A sts that most of them could be explained, and that there ur factors involved which determine the likelihood of
4.1.
To start with, there are many split paradigms involving derivation, including borderline cases between inflection and derivation. The more derivation-like the relationship, the more likely are split paradigms to occur - that is, if they can still qualify as such. Hebrew present tense forms may function as active or passive participles, and consequently also as nouns (primarily agent nouns) or adjectives. In most cases, the relationship is quite automatic, i.e., a derived noun or adjective of that type presupposes an underlying verb in the relevant binyan, for example, s’orl?er‘a guard ’ presupposes the pa‘al verb s’amar ‘ he guarded ‘, mc-ahel ‘director’ presupposes the pi‘el verb nihel ‘he directed’, etc. Still, there are many gaps, which result in a sort of split paradigms of participles with binyanim other than the ones they seem to have originated from. Thus, me’aheu ‘lover’, which is a pi‘el present (or active participle) verb in form, can only be derived from pa‘al ‘ahav ‘ he loved ‘, since the expected pi‘el past, ‘ihev, is nonexistent. Similarly, me’asef ‘bus stopping at all stations’ would be related to pa‘al ‘asaf’ he collected’ rather t an to pi’el ‘isef, which is hardly ever used. The same applies to present tense - or passive participle forms of normally passive binyanim, for example; me!umad ‘ scholar’ is related to either pi‘el limed ‘he taught’ or pa‘al Zamad ‘he learned’, but not to the expected pu‘al lumad, which is obsolete. The same is true of merugaz ‘angry’, which can be derived from pa’al ragaz ‘he was angry’ or hitl>a‘el hitragex ‘ he became angry’, but not from the expected nonexistent rugaz. And so on. Similar cases are found in Arabic (data supplied by George Saad, personal communication) : the passive participle mabbfib ‘ loved’ is not conceived to be related, as expected, to the first conjugation form babba, which is obsolete, but rather to ‘ababba ‘he,loved’, which is a
S. Bolozky / TIte autottornyof the teme paradigm
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fourth conjugation form - and whose own expected passive participle, ,JIIZI~IN/& is not in use at all. Similarly, first conjugation participle tnajmirt ‘crazy’ is not conceived as related to its expected source _jatma ‘ he drove (someone) crazy’, which is no longer used, but to its passive counterpart, ~,~III~I~N ‘he became, was driven crazy’. Except for present tense, or participle, forms functioning as nouns or adjectives, each nonpassive birqmrzhas an almost automatic nominalization associated with it, for example, ktirn ‘writing’ with pn‘al katat! ‘he wrote’, si&rr ‘arranging, arrangement ’ with pi’el sider ‘ he arranged ‘, hastaca ‘dictation ’ with rt~f‘il hixtic ‘ he dictated ‘, hitkatwt ‘corresponding, correspondence’ with hitpdel hirkate~~ ‘ he corresponded ‘, hikaltut ‘ being absorbed’ with nif’al tlik/at ‘he was absorbed’, etc. Among these nominalizations too, there are forms associated with hiycrrtitn other than the obvious, expected ones, for example, ‘iprrl ‘casting a shadow, classifying as secret’ is related to hif‘i/ he’efil ‘ he cast a shadow’ rather than to the nonexistent expected pi‘el form ‘ipel. krisa ‘laundering, laundry’ is not related to obsolete pa‘al karas, but rather to pi’4 kibes ‘he laundered’. riktd ‘dancing, a dance’ is associated with pa’al rakad ‘he danced ’ rather than with the expected literary pi‘4 form riked. diywt ‘discussion’ is derived from pdd hr7 ‘he discussed’ rather than from the expected pi‘el dj*ert, which is nonexistent. And so on and so forth. One factor causing split paradigms, then, is a derivational relationship, which may sometimes be almost as automatic as inflection relationship, but still is not strong enough. 4.2. Another factor is morphophonological opacity that might obliterate the formal relationships between the different tense subparadigms within each hhyar;. The closer the canonical form of each subparadigm to other canonical forms within the same bhyan, the lesser the likelihood of split paradigms. In other words, paradigm split at tense lines may be in direct relation to the morphophonological similarity between the component tense paradigms within a given birtl,art.It is no accident that of the seven hir~ycrtuh~. those that are most involved in split paradigms, i.e., pa‘al, #al and pi‘d. are also the ones exhibiting the greatest variation in form from one tense subparadigm to another. Observe the following: (6)
hirlyat~
post
preserl t
firtirre
pa’al
kaSar
koSer
yikSor
‘tie’
S. Bdozky
nif’al pi’e1 hif‘il hitpa’ef pep’al huf’d
nikSar kiSer hil biS hitlabeS kuSar hl baS
/ The atrtonomy of’ the tense paradigm
nikSar mekaSer mal biS mitlabeS mekuSar mul baS
yikaSer yekaSer yal biS yitlabeS yekuSar yui baS
121
‘be ti&’ ‘connect’ ‘dress’ ‘ get dressed ’ ‘ be connected ’ ’ be dressed ’
In @nl, variation between past, present and future forms is the greatest which accounts for so many split paradigms- involving pa’al. The future of ~?~~~~~ is also very different from its past an8 present, and the present and future of pi‘d too vary noticeably from the canonical form of its past. The rest of the bi~~wnim have fairly uniform phonological Icorms, e.ccept for variations responsible for tense marking - and indeed are less involved in ms. When they are, they often tend not to be split themselves, but rather serve to complement some pa’al, nif’al or pi’el form with a tense gap* 4.3.
Still another factor is morphophonologicai opacity resulting from irregular or defective conjugations involving segment deletion, weakening, compensatory processes, etc. Most of the members of split paradigms are not regular verbs, and the irregular conjugations sometimes obscure intrahirtyan relationships. Thus, for instance, in yaxolta - tuxal in 3.2 above a stem-initial y is deleted (or coalesced); both niga.f and yigaf have lost a stem-initial n; yqfirc involves a ‘hollow’ second radical that is sometimes lost; ‘mt‘, nekkutt, ne‘erac, etc. contain an underlying glottal stop and perhaps a voiced pharyngeal fricative, both of which are normally deleted or are optionally realized as a glottal stop in certain limited environments; and so on. Under such circumstances it is sometimes difficult to see an immediate relationship between forms belonging to two tense subparadigms of a single binyan. 4.4. In the cases of asymmetrical splits cited in 3.2 above, i.e., where some paradigm is intact, but one of its tense subparadigms also serves to complement a tense gap in a related paradigm, that gap would usually be in the future - except ,for the first illustration, where the nonexistent form is the past form *yixed. It is possible that another factor is involved here:
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S. Bolozky / The autonomy of the tense paradigm
there are (and there have always been) good reasons to believe that, in Hebrew, the past (or perfect) stem is more basic than the future (or imperfect) one, and thus one might expect less gaps in the past tense than in the future. This is only a speculation, however, since no actual evidence f,r it is available here.
5.
Evidence from split paradigms seems to suggest, then, that tense paradigms are to some extent autonomous. At the same time, however, it is clear that split paradigms arise primarily where intra-biriJ?un relationships are obscured by considerable morphophonological change from one subparadigm to another, a situation which is often complicated even further by irregular morphophonemic rules involving deletion, weakening, etc. Split paradigms are rare in biuyamh where stem identity is sufficiently transparent across tenses, and seldom involve totally regular verbs. Furthermore, I could not find a split paradigm involving recently formed verbs; recent verbs are always realized in all tenses, clearly pointing to the binyarl as the morphological unit. ‘Split paradigm formation’ is probably not very productive, then. It seems that the split paradigm phenomenon results from morphophonological opacity of the tense relationships within a bhtyan, and thus should not be regarded as an autonomous tendency which necessarily argues for the independence of the tense paradigm from its binyan.
6. To conclude, it appears that two types of argument could be used in claiming autonomy for the tense paradigm: scope of rule application, i.e., where rules are either restricted to tense paradigms or excluded from applying to them, and paradigms that are split along tense lines. But although both types of evidence indicate that tense paradigms are valid categories, it should be borne in mind that they essentially arose only as a result of considerable morphophonological opacity, and are thus limited in number; moreover, they do not seem to be on the increase synchronically. It is not anticipated, then, that the tense paradigm would become the basic morphophonological domain in the Hebrew verb.
S. Bolozky / The autonomy of the tense paradigm
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References Barkai, M., 1975. On phonological representation, rules, and opacity. Lingua 37, 363-376. Bdo;tky, S., 1878, Some aspects of Modern Webrew phonology. In: R. Aronson Berman, Modern Hebrew structure, Ch. II, 1l-67. Tel Aviv: Universities Publishing Projects. ky, S,, in press. Paradi m coherence: evidence for Modern Hebrew. Afroasiatic . Child morphoIogy am1 morphophonemic
change. Linguistics 17, 21-50.
ON THE AUTONOMY OF THE TENSE RN HEBREW EVIDENCE
Uniu. of Masscxhusetts, Judaic Studies, c/o Classics Dept., Amherst, USA
1. Although in traditional Hebrew linguistics there have been attempts to relate all verb conjugations to a single root, or to the first conjugation (pa‘al), it has also been acknowledged that each verb conjugation (binyan) is autonomous in many important ways. Recent generative accounts of Modern Hebrew phonology and morphology reassert the status of the b&van as a basic morphophonological domain - for example, Barkai (1973, where it is argued that application df morphophonemic rules should be restricted to binyanim displaying morphophonemic alternation, or Bolozky (in press), which points to the considerable amount of leveling taking place within a binyan, from one tense paradigm to another, In the latter account, however, it is shown that paradigmatic leveling and analogical extension are commonest in inflectional paradigms and the least likely in derivations, and that the likelihood of analogy could be looked at as a continuum extending from inflection par excellence to farfetched derivation, with many borderline, cases in between (e.g., almost automatic nominalizations of a particular hinyan). Obviously, the binyanim are inflections par excellence, but so are the sub-paradigms for each tense within a birzyan, and the question raised here is whether a tense paradigm can be justified as a morphophonological domain - without, of course, challenging the well-established autonomy of the whole binyan as a morphophonological unit. 2. One type of argumentation for the autonomy of tense paradigms involves morphological or morphophonemic rules that are either restricted
116
S. Bolozky 1 The autonomy of the tense paradigm
to tense paradigms or are excluded from them. There are numerous rules like that; only some representative cases will be cited here. Take, for instance, the rule of a-Raising, cited in Barkai (1975) and Balszky (1978), whereby a-+e/_._ + CV is restricted to the past and preq;ent paradi hif‘il conjugation, as shown below: (1)
Past hevim hekim herim
Present mevin mekim merim
Future yavin yakim yarim
‘ understand’ ‘found, establish’ ‘raise’
The rule does not apply anywhere else, although its structural description is found elsewhere in the present of the yi‘e1 and pu‘al conjugations. Another example: when underlying unsuffixed past forms (of any bitjyarl)end with /a/, the corresponding unsuffixed present and future forms will end with [e]: (2)
Past kana ni kna gila gula hitgala hikna hukna
Present kone nikne mega le megul e mitgale makne mukne
Future yikne yi kane yegale yegule yitgale yakne yukne
‘buy’ ‘ be bought’ ’ discover’ ‘ be discovered ’ ‘ appear ’ ‘cause to acquire’ ’ be acquired ’
And there are also cases where a rule is blocked in tense paradigms. For instance, in the Hebrew verb, stem-final /a/ and /e/, and possibly also /o/, are deleted before a stressed vowel that forms, or starts, the suffix, for example : (3)
katav kotev tedaber meda her yesudar hitIabeS
‘he wrote’ ‘he writes’ ‘you will speak’ ‘he speaks’ ‘it will be arranged’ ’ he dressed ’
N N
katvti kotvim tedabri meda 3r6t yesuc;rb hitlabSa
‘they ‘ they ‘you ‘they ‘ they ’ they
wrote’ write * (fem.) will speak’ (fem.) speak’ will be arranged ’ dressed ’
If deletion would yield a CCC sequence, the vowel in question is not deleted, but is reduced to [e] (or mamtained as such, if it is underlyingly so) : (4)
yixtov nixtav huxtav tuzlr&
‘he will write’ ‘it was written’ ‘it was dictated’ ‘you will be mentioned’
N N -
yixtevu nixteva huxtevti tuzkeri
‘they will write’ ‘it (fem.) was written’ ‘they were dictated’ ‘you (fem.) will be mentioned’
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117
This rule is blocked, however, in the present of the nif‘al, pu’aE and huf ‘al
nixth
muxtzkv
‘it is accepted’ (rather than the ‘it is written’ (rather than the ‘it Is dictated’ (rather than the
mekubaf&t ‘they (fem.) are accepted’ expected *mekubl&) nixtavim ‘they are written” expected *nixtevim) muxtavim ‘they are dictated’ expected *muxtevim)
This note, however, will not concentrate on evidence from the scope of rule application, but rather on the interesting phenomenon of split paradigms in Modern Hebrew. Verbal paradigms tend to split along tense lines - as shown, for instance, in Hooper (1979). Like English go taking its past tense from Itpe&, Hebrew verbs sometimes have one or more of their tense paradigms realized with a morphologically-unrelated root. For instance, the common future counterpart of the pa’al forms ‘amar ‘he said, told’ and ‘o111er‘he says, tells’ is not the expected yomar, but rather the hif‘il form yagid, and the commonly used infinitival form is Zehagidrather than Zomar. yomar and Zomar are usually literary, or at least formal; higid, the expected past of yagid, is actually obsolete. Arabic has similar cases. As pointed out to me by George Saad, the commonly used imperative form corresponding to taraka ‘he left’ and yatruku ‘he leaves, will leave’ is not the expected ‘utruk, but rather da‘. The formal p*ast of da‘, wada‘a, is rarely used, and its imperfect counterpart, yada‘u, was already noted as obsolete in Sibawayhi’s eighth-century grammar. 3.2.
As a rule, however, Hebrew split paradigms tend to maintain the same root throughout the paradigm - only the binyan is split. Thus, the future counterpart of the pa‘al form yaxolta ‘you could ’ (or colloquial yaxalta) is the huf ‘al realization of the same root, tuxal ‘you will be able’. The corresponding pa‘al future or huf ‘al past forms do not exist. Similarly, the nif‘al form nigas’ ‘ he approached, approaches ’ has a pa‘al future realization, yigas’; there exist no corresponding nzy‘al future or pa’al past. In other cases, the corresponding forms do exist, but are either almost obsolete, or
118
S. Bolozky 1 Tile autonomy of the tense paradigm
strictly literary, and in any event less common than the other forms reported. Thus, the future of pi‘el ‘era‘ ‘it occurred’ is pa‘al ye’era‘, and the expected pi’el future ye’ara‘ is extremely literary and for all practical purposes obsolete. The future of pa‘al naf% ‘he rested, took a vacation ’ is either n(f ‘al yinafeS, or pa‘al yafus’(which involves the reotjk.8 rather than n,f.J’), or a periphrastic verb phrase avoiding this verb altogether (since both yinafes and yafus’ sound literary); the expected past counterparts of yhqfes and yafuS, i.e., uipas’and pa$ respectively, are obsolete. The past of pn’al yafuc ‘it will scatter’ is nly’al nafoc ‘it scattered ‘. Pa’alpac and rt~j”al yipoc, respectively, are never heard. A more common split paradigm is that of pi’41 mefaxed ‘he is afraid’ and yefaxed ‘he will be afraid’ with the past of the same root in pa‘al: paxan ‘he was afraid ‘. The pi‘el past pi_& is never used in Modern Hebrew, except sporadically in child analo pa’al itself, however, the present and future of pax&, i.e., poxed ‘he is afraid’ and y$xad ‘he will be afraid’, respectively, do exist alongside with pi‘el’s mefaxed and yefaxed. In other words, the paradigm is split insofar as pi’cl is concerned, but not with respect to pa’al. In fact, this asymmetry, where one hillyan is intact, but in part also serves to complement a tensegap in another binyan, is quite common. For instance, one finds /Cj“i/ hi.Cmh ‘he became fat ‘, mahuh ‘he is becoming fat ‘, yaGk ‘he will become fat’ - but in ya‘al, only sirman ‘he became fat’ is used, complemented in the future by h[f‘i/ ya.bmil rather than by pa‘al yi.Gnan, which is obsolete. Similarly, we have the whole hitpa’el paradigm in hitbager ‘he matured’, mithager ‘he matures’, yitbager ‘he will mature’ - but only hcrgcrr‘he matured’ in pa’al. The corresponding pa‘al future, yirgor’, is never used. ho’ofam ‘he was accused’, mo’oSam ‘he is accused’ and yo’osIcTm‘ he will be accused’ are all in huf ‘al; @al ne’es’am ‘ he was accused’ is normally complemented in the future by huf ‘al yo’o.G-m, since ye’aJ’em, the nif ‘al future, is obsolete. The same holds for ho‘orac ‘he was admired’, mo‘orac ‘he is admired’ and yo‘orac ‘he will be admired’ - and nif’al ue‘erac ‘he was admired ‘, whose future counterpart, ye‘arec, is rarely used. Another example : yised ‘ he established ‘, nle~C~sec( ‘ he is establishing’, yeyascd ‘he will establish’ - all in pi‘el. The future of pa’al yasad ‘he established’ is normally yeJ?ased, since the expected pa’al future, yisad, is obsolete. 3.3. There also exist cases of tense paradigms that do not have counterparts in any b’iilyan. nicau ‘he stood/stands motionless’ is a nly’al form that exists
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119
in the past and present only, and cannot be said to have a precise future counterpart anywhere. But to the best of my knowledge, there are not many of those.
The existence of split paradigms is not as arbitrary as it might seem. A sts that most of them could be explained, and that there ur factors involved which determine the likelihood of
4.1.
To start with, there are many split paradigms involving derivation, including borderline cases between inflection and derivation. The more derivation-like the relationship, the more likely are split paradigms to occur - that is, if they can still qualify as such. Hebrew present tense forms may function as active or passive participles, and consequently also as nouns (primarily agent nouns) or adjectives. In most cases, the relationship is quite automatic, i.e., a derived noun or adjective of that type presupposes an underlying verb in the relevant binyan, for example, s’orl?er‘a guard ’ presupposes the pa‘al verb s’amar ‘ he guarded ‘, mc-ahel ‘director’ presupposes the pi‘el verb nihel ‘he directed’, etc. Still, there are many gaps, which result in a sort of split paradigms of participles with binyanim other than the ones they seem to have originated from. Thus, me’aheu ‘lover’, which is a pi‘el present (or active participle) verb in form, can only be derived from pa‘al ‘ahav ‘ he loved ‘, since the expected pi‘el past, ‘ihev, is nonexistent. Similarly, me’asef ‘bus stopping at all stations’ would be related to pa‘al ‘asaf’ he collected’ rather t an to pi’el ‘isef, which is hardly ever used. The same applies to present tense - or passive participle forms of normally passive binyanim, for example; me!umad ‘ scholar’ is related to either pi‘el limed ‘he taught’ or pa‘al Zamad ‘he learned’, but not to the expected pu‘al lumad, which is obsolete. The same is true of merugaz ‘angry’, which can be derived from pa’al ragaz ‘he was angry’ or hitl>a‘el hitragex ‘ he became angry’, but not from the expected nonexistent rugaz. And so on. Similar cases are found in Arabic (data supplied by George Saad, personal communication) : the passive participle mabbfib ‘ loved’ is not conceived to be related, as expected, to the first conjugation form babba, which is obsolete, but rather to ‘ababba ‘he,loved’, which is a
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fourth conjugation form - and whose own expected passive participle, ,JIIZI~IN/& is not in use at all. Similarly, first conjugation participle tnajmirt ‘crazy’ is not conceived as related to its expected source _jatma ‘ he drove (someone) crazy’, which is no longer used, but to its passive counterpart, ~,~III~I~N ‘he became, was driven crazy’. Except for present tense, or participle, forms functioning as nouns or adjectives, each nonpassive birqmrzhas an almost automatic nominalization associated with it, for example, ktirn ‘writing’ with pn‘al katat! ‘he wrote’, si&rr ‘arranging, arrangement ’ with pi’el sider ‘ he arranged ‘, hastaca ‘dictation ’ with rt~f‘il hixtic ‘ he dictated ‘, hitkatwt ‘corresponding, correspondence’ with hitpdel hirkate~~ ‘ he corresponded ‘, hikaltut ‘ being absorbed’ with nif’al tlik/at ‘he was absorbed’, etc. Among these nominalizations too, there are forms associated with hiycrrtitn other than the obvious, expected ones, for example, ‘iprrl ‘casting a shadow, classifying as secret’ is related to hif‘i/ he’efil ‘ he cast a shadow’ rather than to the nonexistent expected pi‘el form ‘ipel. krisa ‘laundering, laundry’ is not related to obsolete pa‘al karas, but rather to pi’4 kibes ‘he laundered’. riktd ‘dancing, a dance’ is associated with pa’al rakad ‘he danced ’ rather than with the expected literary pi‘4 form riked. diywt ‘discussion’ is derived from pdd hr7 ‘he discussed’ rather than from the expected pi‘el dj*ert, which is nonexistent. And so on and so forth. One factor causing split paradigms, then, is a derivational relationship, which may sometimes be almost as automatic as inflection relationship, but still is not strong enough. 4.2. Another factor is morphophonological opacity that might obliterate the formal relationships between the different tense subparadigms within each hhyar;. The closer the canonical form of each subparadigm to other canonical forms within the same bhyan, the lesser the likelihood of split paradigms. In other words, paradigm split at tense lines may be in direct relation to the morphophonological similarity between the component tense paradigms within a given birtl,art.It is no accident that of the seven hir~ycrtuh~. those that are most involved in split paradigms, i.e., pa‘al, #al and pi‘d. are also the ones exhibiting the greatest variation in form from one tense subparadigm to another. Observe the following: (6)
hirlyat~
post
preserl t
firtirre
pa’al
kaSar
koSer
yikSor
‘tie’
S. Bdozky
nif’al pi’e1 hif‘il hitpa’ef pep’al huf’d
nikSar kiSer hil biS hitlabeS kuSar hl baS
/ The atrtonomy of’ the tense paradigm
nikSar mekaSer mal biS mitlabeS mekuSar mul baS
yikaSer yekaSer yal biS yitlabeS yekuSar yui baS
121
‘be ti&’ ‘connect’ ‘dress’ ‘ get dressed ’ ‘ be connected ’ ’ be dressed ’
In @nl, variation between past, present and future forms is the greatest which accounts for so many split paradigms- involving pa’al. The future of ~?~~~~~ is also very different from its past an8 present, and the present and future of pi‘d too vary noticeably from the canonical form of its past. The rest of the bi~~wnim have fairly uniform phonological Icorms, e.ccept for variations responsible for tense marking - and indeed are less involved in ms. When they are, they often tend not to be split themselves, but rather serve to complement some pa’al, nif’al or pi’el form with a tense gap* 4.3.
Still another factor is morphophonologicai opacity resulting from irregular or defective conjugations involving segment deletion, weakening, compensatory processes, etc. Most of the members of split paradigms are not regular verbs, and the irregular conjugations sometimes obscure intrahirtyan relationships. Thus, for instance, in yaxolta - tuxal in 3.2 above a stem-initial y is deleted (or coalesced); both niga.f and yigaf have lost a stem-initial n; yqfirc involves a ‘hollow’ second radical that is sometimes lost; ‘mt‘, nekkutt, ne‘erac, etc. contain an underlying glottal stop and perhaps a voiced pharyngeal fricative, both of which are normally deleted or are optionally realized as a glottal stop in certain limited environments; and so on. Under such circumstances it is sometimes difficult to see an immediate relationship between forms belonging to two tense subparadigms of a single binyan. 4.4. In the cases of asymmetrical splits cited in 3.2 above, i.e., where some paradigm is intact, but one of its tense subparadigms also serves to complement a tense gap in a related paradigm, that gap would usually be in the future - except ,for the first illustration, where the nonexistent form is the past form *yixed. It is possible that another factor is involved here:
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there are (and there have always been) good reasons to believe that, in Hebrew, the past (or perfect) stem is more basic than the future (or imperfect) one, and thus one might expect less gaps in the past tense than in the future. This is only a speculation, however, since no actual evidence f,r it is available here.
5.
Evidence from split paradigms seems to suggest, then, that tense paradigms are to some extent autonomous. At the same time, however, it is clear that split paradigms arise primarily where intra-biriJ?un relationships are obscured by considerable morphophonological change from one subparadigm to another, a situation which is often complicated even further by irregular morphophonemic rules involving deletion, weakening, etc. Split paradigms are rare in biuyamh where stem identity is sufficiently transparent across tenses, and seldom involve totally regular verbs. Furthermore, I could not find a split paradigm involving recently formed verbs; recent verbs are always realized in all tenses, clearly pointing to the binyarl as the morphological unit. ‘Split paradigm formation’ is probably not very productive, then. It seems that the split paradigm phenomenon results from morphophonological opacity of the tense relationships within a bhtyan, and thus should not be regarded as an autonomous tendency which necessarily argues for the independence of the tense paradigm from its binyan.
6. To conclude, it appears that two types of argument could be used in claiming autonomy for the tense paradigm: scope of rule application, i.e., where rules are either restricted to tense paradigms or excluded from applying to them, and paradigms that are split along tense lines. But although both types of evidence indicate that tense paradigms are valid categories, it should be borne in mind that they essentially arose only as a result of considerable morphophonological opacity, and are thus limited in number; moreover, they do not seem to be on the increase synchronically. It is not anticipated, then, that the tense paradigm would become the basic morphophonological domain in the Hebrew verb.
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References Barkai, M., 1975. On phonological representation, rules, and opacity. Lingua 37, 363-376. Bdo;tky, S., 1878, Some aspects of Modern Webrew phonology. In: R. Aronson Berman, Modern Hebrew structure, Ch. II, 1l-67. Tel Aviv: Universities Publishing Projects. ky, S,, in press. Paradi m coherence: evidence for Modern Hebrew. Afroasiatic . Child morphoIogy am1 morphophonemic
change. Linguistics 17, 21-50.