The Historical Present qatel in Biblical Aramaic.

• Author: Andrason, Alexander

1. INTRODUCTION

   The present article is dedicated to one of the most controversial aspects of the verbal systems of Biblical Aramaic (BA) and North-West Semitic (NWS) languages, namely the phenomenon of historical present (HP). Specifically, we aim to determine whether the BA "active participle," henceforth referred to as the qatel form,' instantiates an HP category and, if this is the case, what functions and properties the HP qatel exhibits. To answer this research question, we will follow a typological approach to the category of HP--our original synthesis of the most relevant works dedicated to HPs in the languages of the world.

   We will begin our article by familiarizing the reader with the previous studies on the HP qatel in BA (as well as its cognates in closely related languages) and by designing our typological framework. Subsequently, we will introduce BA evidence--the product of an empirical study during which the entire BA corpus has been examined. After that, we will evaluate the results of this evidence within the adopted framework and answer our research question. In the end, we will draw our main conclusions and suggest possible avenues for future research.

2. PREVIOUS STUDIES

   Studies dedicated to the HP qatel in BA and to the equivalent categories found in other ancient NWS languages (e.g., Canaano-Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Biblical Hebrew, as well as in extra-biblical Aramaic varieties) that would be empirically driven and theoretically principled are scarce. With the noticeable exception of Cotrozzi's (2010) commendable monograph, very detailed and well grounded in linguistic theory, and Li's (2009) detailed corpus analysis of BA verbal forms, including qatel, the use of "active participles" as HPs in BA and other ancient NWS languages has not been dealt with in individual articles, chapters, or books. (2) This, of course, does not mean that BA and NWS scholars have ignored the category of HP entirely. As will be evident from the subsequent discussion, the presence of HPs in Biblical Aramaic and in ancient NWS languages has been noted for a long time and their properties have, at least to some extent, been described.

   Overall, the evaluation of the studies that are concerned with the HP qatel in Biblical Aramaic and the other BCE Aramaic varieties (i.e., Old Aramaic and Imperial Aramaic) reveals the existence of two radically opposite proposals. According to one view--certainly the predominant one although not grounded in a comprehensive empirical corpus study--BA qatel is extensively used as an HP, especially in the book of Daniel. Depending on terminology, this usage is referred to as "a narrative tense/past" (Bauer and Leander 1927: 292, 295-96; Rosenthal 1961: 55; Rosen 1961: 184; Kienast 2001: 323; Gzella 2004: 121, 327; Cotrozzi 2010: 161), (3) a "constatative-narrative" form introducing "past events" (Rosen 1961: 185), or, following our denomination, a "historical present" (Rogland 2003: 430-32).

   In several cases, the HP qatel apparently marks "a new step in the unfolding story" (Cotrozzi 2010: 161). Nevertheless, in many other instances, different motivations for use of the narrative qatel seem to be at play (ibid.). In particular, the HP qatel may communicate the reactions to "surprising turns," which themselves are encoded through the Suffix Conjugation (SC) qetal (Cotrozzi 2010: 161-62). As a result, it is sometimes proposed that the usage and role of narrative qatel forms are "ambiguous and do... not fit neatly the cross-linguistic pattern of the HP" (Cotrozzi 2010: 162; see section 3). Scholars have also proposed certain tendencies regarding the lexical types of the verbs used in the HP qatel. Most instances apparently draw on speech verbs (Rogland 2003: 430; Cotrozzi 2010: 162), (4) although many of them are said to instantiate the so-called formulaic syntagm (Bauer and Leander 1927: 295; Segert 1975: 383). (5) Other verbs that belong to two main semantic types, i.e., sensory verbs (hzh 'see') and motion verbs (?ll 'come' and npq 'come out'), are apparently less frequent. A similar situation is argued to be the case for other BCE Aramaic varieties: qatel was used as "a preterital tense" in Egyptian Aramaic (with several, more or less ambiguous, examples involving the verb 'mr, Muraoka and Porten 1998: 203-4; Rogland 2003: 431) and as "a narrative past" in Imperial Aramaic (Gzella 2004: 327). (6)

   The other proposal--contrary to the previous view, much less common although grounded in a systematic empirical study--rejects the presence of the HP qatel in BA (Li 2009; 2010a; 2010b). (7) This decision is motivated by three types of arguments. First, several cases where qatel "allegedly" functions as an HP, i.e., as an equivalent to "a simple past" (Li 2009: 52), should be explained as progressive or habitual uses, which constitute the prototypical components of the semantic potential of qatel in BA (at least, in the variety employed in Daniel). Analogously, "there are no unequivocal examples" in which qatel would be used as a narrative tense in the remaining, extra-biblical material of Imperial Aramaic. Rather, all the cases attest to a (past) progressive-habitual meaning (Li 2009: 54). Second, because of the "formulaic" nature of the expressions involving speech verbs and the apparently less common use of similar qatel verbs in "non-formulaic clauses," speech verbs introducing direct quotations do not constitute examples of the narrative tense and, thus, cases of HPs (Li 2009: 43-45). Third, to be classified as an HP, the narrative qatel would need to be predominantly used outside a past-time context as a present. Contrary to this, most examples of qatel in Daniel appear, according to Li, in a past time frame, which "suggests that [qatel] is not a present tense, but a general imperfective that can also express the present as part of its imperfective function" (Li 2009: 54).

   This explanation would also apply to the qatel of speech verbs introducing direct quotations. That is, originally, these forms were not employed in an HP function sensu stricto, but rather because "the aspectual difference" existing between SC (which Li defines as a "simple past") and qatel (in Li's terminology, a "past imperfective") "was... irrelevant for such expressions" (Li 2009: 55). Subsequently, when qatel acquired a more marked present-tense character, this speech-introducing function was maintained "as a vestige of earlier usage." As a result, the qatel of verbs such as 'mr or nh should be analyzed as the "occasionally indifferent use of the imperfective aspect in expressions introducing direct speech" (Li 2010b: 144). (8)

   Our article aims to establish which of the two positions is (more) accurate: the one that, albeit upheld by the vast majority of scholars, has not been derived from a comprehensive empirical study, or the one that, albeit formulated in light of an empirical analysis, seems to have gained only a marginal acceptance.

3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

   As we mentioned earlier, the present study is developed within a typologically driven approach to the category of HP. That is, we aim to detect the possible cases of HPs in BA and examine their properties with the methodological apparatus that we have derived from the extant research on HPs in the languages of the world.

   In most general terms, we understand an HP as a particular combination of a linguistic form and its (broadly understood) meaning. An HP emerges when a form that is typically used as (some type of) an imperfective present tense is employed to refer to past events, situations, and activities (Fludernik 1991: 392; Benavides 2019: 7). In other words, the HP is the propriety of a form the semantic potential of which is characterized by two phenomena: (a) the prototypical or one of the prototypical senses expressed by that form is an imperfective present sense; (b) one of its less or nonprototypical senses, at least from a global perspective, is a past sense, virtually limited to (personal or general) narratives (Benavides 2019). As a result, contrary to many other senses that may be exhibited or accumulated by verbal forms in the languages of the world, an HP is not a proper tense-aspect-mood, stylistic, or discourse-pragmatic semantic/functional domain; it is a combination of such particular domains with the rest of the semantic potential of the form, especially its prototypical core.

   Crosslinguistic evidence allows one to distinguish between two main types of HPs. The first of them, which is apparently more widespread (Cotrozzi 2010; Benavides 2019: 10) and/or more commonly described in scholarship, is a "progredient" (Fludernik 1992: 127-28) or "propulsive" HP (Bertinetto 2001: 98). This HP type "make[s] up the plot" (Bertinetto 2001: 98) and encodes perfective events (Silva-Corvalan 1983; Bertinetto 2001: 98). Accordingly, it communicates (one of) the so-called complicating actions (Schiffrin 1981; Silva-Corvalan 1983; Benavides 2019: 9-10) introduced in "iconically ordered narrative clauses" (Bertinetto 2001: 99) and refers to perfective, i.e., "punctiliar, inchoative, [and] instantaneous" actions (Cotrozzi 2010: 145). The common contextual exponent of this aspectual load of the progredient/propulsive HP is its compatibility with particles or adverbials marking aspectual boundness and punctiliarity, e.g., at once, then, at this (precise) time, in English and their equivalents in other languages (Wolfson 1989: 145; Paraskevas 1993: 279-80).

   From a temporal and aspectual perspective, a progredient/propulsive HP thus corresponds to genuine narrative past grams used to advance narrative, i.e., a perfective past or an aoristic/preterital past (i.e., the so-called simple past) (Bertinetto 2001: 98, 102-3, 108). It can replace such narrative pasts (or be replaced by them) and often occurs in their vicinity. The other type, seemingly less common and/or less commonly discussed in scholarship, is a "situational" (Fludernik 1992...