B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

כִּי־יֶ֣לֶד יֻלַּד־לָ֗נוּ

With apologies, but it is getting me thinking about tense, aspect, and mood, so hope may be excusable.

I was struck that the majority of translations have 'a child is born to us', and was wondering first of all what this English form is called. 'To be' plus a past participle, but not a present continuous passive - 'millions of children are born every day', but one with a perfective aspect, if that's the term. I have hunted through several basic grammar web pages and not found it - all the ones only show a present perfect constructed with 'to have' - 'a child has been born to us'.

So my first question is: what is this construction called?

Then I was wondering about what if conveys. What is the difference between 'the plane has landed' and 'the plane is landed'.

The latter seems to focus on the present state of the plane, rather than giving information about the completion of an action.

It also seems to have a dramatic quality, good for a live reporter on the scene - 'the plane is landed.. all eyes are on the exit door'.

Coming at last to the text, what should I call this Pu'al perfect if I am trying to avoid the 'perfect'/'imperfect' terms? It would seem strange to say 'what is the meaning of the qatal here?'. But I have never heard anyone talk about, say, the qutal and the yequtal (and I see that קטל, if that is the word, only occurs in the Qal form, which would clearly be a possible objection).

In the long discussions about the meaning of qatal, weqatal, yiqtol and wayyiqtol, are people referring mainly to meanings of verbs in the Qal form or in other forms also?

This is called a qal passive perfect! It looks like a pual perfect, of course, but it isn't.

We see the qal passive in Exodus 3, where it says that the bush "was not consumed" as a qal passive participle אֻכַּל. We also see it in Genesis in which the woman "was taken" לֻקְחָה (that is, לֻקְּחָה with the omission of the dagesh due to Skin 'Em Levy) from the man.

The qal passive is relatively rare (since the niphal basically functions as a passive for the qal), but it does pop up at opportune moments in the text of the Bible.

The question about "is born" and "has been born" is one of the development of English.

It was very common in Germanic languages to us "is" for the perfect of verbs of motion. We still see this in German, and we hear it in English hymns (and Scriptures). My guess is that "born" was seen as a type of arrival in the world, so a perfect was formed with "is" in that case, as well.

Thanks, Jason. Am I right in thinking that, to write it as a Qal passive perfect, one needs to remove the dagesh forte from the lamed? יֻלַד

(https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=M-V ... &q&f=false) p. 183.

Basically you're right since Qal doesn't use Dagesh.

But this Dagesh Forte is different than the Dagesh Forte that you see, for example, in the Pu'al.

The Dagesh in the Pual is part of the verb-form itself.
And the Dagesh Forte that comes here, in the Qal passive, comes only to keep the previous short vowel "u" stable (so it would not become Sheva).

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Another thing, just a note.
Sometimes when you see a verb as imperfect Niphal - it is actually Qal Passive.
The MT scribes, when the spelling allowed it, they voweled the Passive Qal as Niphal.
And only when the spelling didn't allow it, they voweled it as Qal Passive.

Thank you, David. Is that what is meant by 'sharpening' in Gesenius 1910 52e:

'the sharpening of the second radical may have taken place in order to retain the characteristic ŭ of the first syllable'

ie 'sharpening' = doubling?

So then does the conjugation of the Qal passive perfect look identical to the Pu'al perfect?

Hi Andrew,

I don't know the meaning of "sharpening", but what you quoted is about this issue.

And yes, since the Qal passive also gets a Dagesh, its form is similar to the Pu'al one.

Yes, Andrew. I believe that is what Gesenius was referring to.