At the web-site of the Society of Biblical Literature there is a
review of Furuli doctoral dissertation. If you want to read it, you can
go to
www.bookreviews.org and type "fururli" in the search
window.
www.bookreviews.org/pdf/5564_5860.pdf
Furuli, Rolf
A New Understanding of the Verbal System of
Classical Hebrew: An Attempt to Distinguish Between
Semantic and Pragmatic Factors
Øvre Smestadvei: Awatu, 2006. Pp. 508. Paper. 300 kr.
ISBN 8299463343.
John Kaltner
Rhodes College
Memphis, Tennessee
In this version of his 2005 University of Oslo dissertation, Rolf J. Furuli presents the
results of his analysis of all 79,574 finite and infinite verbal forms found in the Hebrew
Bible, the Qumran material, Ben Sira, and the inscriptions. He studies 4,261 of these
forms in detail, with particular attention to their temporal reference, modality, and
discourse functions, in order to determine how many conjugations are found in the
classical Hebrew verbal system. Going against the common view that there are four
conjugations, Furuli argues that there are only two because the waw prefix of wayyiqtol
and weqatal is a syntactic, not a semantic, marker.