Conditional Sentences in Contemporary Hebrew: Structure, Meaning, and Usage of Tenses (review)

This interesting, well-researched book describes Israeli Hebrew (IH) conditional sentences and is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation submitted to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1999 (Semitist Gideon Goldenberg served as supervisor).

Ch. 1, ‘Introduction’ (5–8), explores the relationship between the protasis (conditional) and the apodosis. The author elaborates on the notion that there is no circumstantial link between them and provides evidence in IH that conditionals are not topics. Ch. 2, ‘The boundaries of the conditional sentence and the status of the protasis’ (9–22), demonstrates, among other points made, that the use of the conditional conjunction does not imply that a sentence is conditional. Thus, lo yadati ʔim tavo ‘I did not know whether you would come’ uses the word ʔim, literally ‘if’ (12).

Ch. 3, ‘The conditional constructions of present-day Hebrew’ (23–84), surveys the major varieties of conditional expression with 161 illustrations. One unusual type has a past in the protasis and a nonpast in the apodosis: ʔani yaxol lehagid lemišehi—lidlakti vehi—ʔim nidlakta tarʔe ʔet hamanoʔa šelxa ‘I can tell someone—I have been turned on and she—if you have been turned on show your engine’ [sic] (36).

Ch. 4, ‘The scope of conditionality’ (85–88), explains the difficulty in determining whether the condition applies to the entire protasis as such or whether ‘there are different emphasized elements which can sometimes be distinct in different protases’ (85). In spoken IH, the intonation of the utterance is often the key to the emphasized element. Ch. 5, ‘Tenses in conditional sentences’ (89–113), offers some penetrating remarks on the IH tense system asserting (and I agree) that the paʕal, poʕel, and yifʕal formations represent past, present, and future respectively (91). In a short excursus on the tense system of Biblical Hebrew (97–98), the author endorses the classical viewpoint (with which I also agree) that paʕal basically represents the perfective aspect while yifʕal the imperfective (98).

Ch. 6, ‘Conclusion’ (114–15), summarizes the findings of the preceding five. One important point brought out is that the word order apodosis-protasis is sometimes obligatory. Another is that ‘conditional sentences are not context dependent, and there are no constraints on their syntactic environment… however, in many cases [they are] lexically connected to a previous utterance’ (114).

Let me now comment on a few editorial matters. The transcription for IH is historically motivated, marking emphatic consonants and gemination which, although phonemic in the biblical language, are no longer so in IH. This is why I have changed the author’s transcription in this notice. Also, there seems to be a page missing (or part thereof) after p. 60, since it abruptly ends right in the middle of a Hebrew sentence. Turning to the rich bibliography (116–22), the name M. A. K. Halliday is consistently misspelled (119 and also in the text, e.g. 12).