8. Did This Book Achieve Its Aim? A Summary

Chapter 8 concludes that the book has achieved the aim formulated in its introduction. It has explained why wa- has two formal variants (wə- and way-) in the Masoretic text; it has clarified the status of the short yiqṭol (with both past and jussive meanings) as a separate verbal morpheme distinct from long yiqṭol; how long yiqṭol was distinguished from short yiqṭol; why qaṭal came to alternate with the inherited wayyiqṭol; why wa-qaṭal acquired imperfective meanings and came to alternate with the inherited long yiqṭol (< *yaqtulu); and finally it has clarified the linguistic reality behind wa- in the ‘consecutive tenses’. As a corollary it is concluded that the term ‘consecutive’ is uncalled for in the grammatical description of Classical Biblical Hebrew