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# Toward the Ocean of the Biblical Hebrew Verbal System

**Authors:** [Alexander Andrason](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/alexander-andrason/) · **Year:** 2015 (Folia Orientalia 52; the catalogue gives 2026, the date it was indexed) · **Venue:** Folia Orientalia 52, 15 ff. **Link:** [wydawnictwo.pan.pl/index.php/fo/article/view/7021](https://wydawnictwo.pan.pl/index.php/fo/article/view/7021) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

[**0** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W7215154603) openalex · 2026-10-19[Folia Orientalia](https://openalex.org/S4306510657)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://wydawnictwo.pan.pl/index.php/fo/article/view/7021)
- [PDF](https://wydawnictwo.pan.pl/index.php/fo/article/download/7021/5835)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7215154603)

**Authors (1)**

1. [Alexander Andrason](https://openalex.org/A5025732228) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8507-9824) · h 14 · 764 citations · 185 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-19); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The paper lifts the author's semantic-map approach from single verb forms to the whole system. Each form is placed on a cross-linguistic grammaticalization path, with its senses weighted by frequency ("waves"): qatal and wayyiqtol on the resultative path (resultative → perfect → perfective past), yiqtol (ongoing → habitual → future → modal) and the participle qotel (ongoing → habitual → future) on the imperfective path, and weqatal (non-modal → semi-modal → modal) and short yiqtol, the jussive (semi-modal → modal), on the modal-contamination path. The two forms on each path are combined into a "current" whose peaks show the semantic domains that the pair covers: taxis and perfective past for the resultative current, habitual and future for the imperfective, semi-modal and modal for the modal one; the three currents together form the system, the "ocean". The paper is programmatic, with figures but no new counts, and the author calls it a first step.

## Ideas

- I1. Use the paper's six path statements as the default sense order for each form when Mova glosses a verb: try the senses in path order and let context choose (e.g. yiqtol: ongoing in a participle-like context, habitual in a past-iterative chain, future in speech, modal after a volitive or in a command). The order gives a deterministic tie-break that can be explained.
- I2. Present the verb system in the manual as three pairs on three paths (qatal/wayyiqtol, yiqtol/qotel, weqatal/jussive), with Torah counts for each form, as one of the views in the aspect–tense debate.

## For Mova

I1 is a rule order for verb glosses in the Torah dictionary's examples and for the tense of events in the world read from the trees; it pairs with I2 of the Andrason 2017 card (`hbo-2026-andrason-against-binarism-simplicity-neatness-stasis`), which supplies the frequencies. I2 is text for [The verb](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/06-verb/) (the aspect–tense debate). No measurement in the paper itself.

## Cite

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

```
@inproceedings{andrason2026toward,
  title = {{Toward the Ocean of the Biblical Hebrew Verbal System}},
  author = {Andrason, Alexander},
  booktitle = {Folia Orientalia},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://wydawnictwo.pan.pl/index.php/fo/article/view/7021}
}
```

- [← previous Against Binarism, Simplicity, Neatness and Stasis: A Theoretical Prolegomenon to the Reality of Verbal Grams in Biblical Hebrew](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo-2026-andrason-against-binarism-simplicity-neatness-stasis/)
- [next → Identifying Phrase Boundaries in the Samaritan Pentateuch with Machine Learning](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo-2026-cantanhede-identifying-phrase-boundaries-samaritan-pentateuch/)
- [↑ back to Ancient Hebrew](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo/)

## References

32 references, 4 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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