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# Semantic Ambiguity of So-Called "Stative Verbs" in Biblical Hebrew: Beyond Active vs. Stative Binary Opposition for the Qatal and Qatil Forms in the Qal Stem

**Authors:** Jun Sato · **Year:** 2021 · **Venue:** PhD thesis, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto **Link:** [hdl.handle.net/1807/107415](http://hdl.handle.net/1807/107415) · **Licence:** free to read, no CC licence stated — summary only

TSpace (University of Toronto)

- [Publisher's page](http://hdl.handle.net/1807/107415)
- [PDF](https://utoronto.scholaris.ca/bitstreams/a5aa8cc9-a9ed-4a3d-a052-8a5f9fb5ace7/download)

**Authors (1)**

1. Jun Sato

Citations and author metrics from OpenAlex (); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The full text is not in our library; this card rests on the repository abstract. Grammars set Qal *qatal* (active, "fientive") against *qatil/qatul* (stative), yet many *qatil/qatul* verbs denote events, not states, which has long "troubled Hebraists" (abstract). Using lexical-aspect theory (Rothstein), the thesis sorts every *qatil/qatul* predicate into states, activities, achievements and accomplishments, and shows how participles, directive-volitive moods, narrative sequence and punctual modifiers shift a stative verb to a dynamic reading. Diachronically it argues that an older stative function and a newer perfect function coexisted in the Northwest Semitic suffix conjugation, the stative being a remnant of the Proto-Semitic verbal adjective. Ideas are provisional.

## Ideas

- I1. Give each Qal *qatil/qatul* lemma in the Torah dictionary a default aktionsart (state / activity / achievement / accomplishment), and list the contextual shifters (wayyiqtol, imperative, punctual time adverb) that move it to an event reading; e.g. a stative like "be heavy" or "be old" read as "became …" in wayyiqtol.
- I2. In glossing and in the world, read a stative verb in wayyiqtol as an inchoative event ("grew old", "became strong"), and in bare qatal as a present or resulting state; check the rule against JPS 1917 on the Torah's stative lemmas.

## For Mova

I1 goes into the Torah dictionary (`macula dict`, [The lexicon](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/10-lexicon/)) as an aspect field; I2 into [The verb](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/06-verb/) (stative verbs, qatal meaning) and into the English gloss and event reading behind `tools/macula/src/prag.rs`.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```
@inproceedings{sato2021semantic,
  title = {{Semantic Ambiguity of So-Called "Stative Verbs" in Biblical Hebrew: Beyond Active vs. Stative Binary Opposition for the Qatal and Qatil Forms in the Qal Stem}},
  author = {Sato, Jun},
  booktitle = {TSpace (University of Toronto)},
  year = {2021},
  url = {http://hdl.handle.net/1807/107415}
}
```

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