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Vav-consecutive
The vav-consecutive or waw-consecutive (וי״ו ההיפוך) is a grammatical construction in Canaanite languages, most notably in Biblical Hebrew. It involves prefixing a verb form with the letter waw in order to change its tense or aspect.
Biblical Hebrew has two main ways that each verb can be conjugated. The suffix conjugation takes suffixes indicating the person, number and gender of the subject, and normally indicates past tense or perfective aspect. The so-called prefix conjugation takes both prefixes and suffixes, with the prefixes primarily indicating person, as well as number for the 1st person and gender for the 3rd, while the suffixes (which are completely different from those used in the suffix conjugation) indicate number for the 2nd and 3rd persons and gender for the 2nd singular and 3rd plural. The prefix conjugation in Biblical Hebrew normally indicates non-past tense or imperfective aspect.
However, early Biblical Hebrew has two additional conjugations, both of which have an extra prefixed letter waw, with meanings more or less reversed from the normal meanings. That is, "vav + prefix conjugation" has the meaning of a past (particularly in a narrative context), and "vav + suffix conjugation" has the meaning of a non-past, opposite from normal (non-vav) usage. This apparent reversal of meaning triggered by the vav prefix led to the early term vav-conversive (ו' ההיפוך). The modern understanding, however, is somewhat more nuanced, and the term vav-consecutive is now used.
This Hebrew prefix, spelled with the letter ו (vav), is normally a conjunction with the meaning of "and" or "and the". Although always appearing in unpointed texts as a simple vav, it has various pronunciations depending on meaning and phonetic context. Specifically:
Example:
Used with verbs, the prefix may have a second function, having the effect of altering the tense and/or aspect of the verb. This may be its sole function, e.g. in the beginning of a narrative; or it may be combined with the conjunctive function. Weingreen gives the following example. If one considers two simple past narrative statements, one expects to find them in the perfect tense:
Šāmar ("kept") and šāp̄aṭ ("judged") are simple perfect qal forms, and they are the citation forms (lemmas) of these verbs. If however these two sentences are not separate but in one continuous narrative then only the first verb is in the perfect, whereas the following verb ("and he judged") is in the imperfect (yišpôṭ) with a prefixed vav:
Conversely, in a continuous narrative referring to the future, the narrative tense will be the imperfect, but this becomes a perfect after the conjunction:
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Vav-consecutive
The vav-consecutive or waw-consecutive (וי״ו ההיפוך) is a grammatical construction in Canaanite languages, most notably in Biblical Hebrew. It involves prefixing a verb form with the letter waw in order to change its tense or aspect.
Biblical Hebrew has two main ways that each verb can be conjugated. The suffix conjugation takes suffixes indicating the person, number and gender of the subject, and normally indicates past tense or perfective aspect. The so-called prefix conjugation takes both prefixes and suffixes, with the prefixes primarily indicating person, as well as number for the 1st person and gender for the 3rd, while the suffixes (which are completely different from those used in the suffix conjugation) indicate number for the 2nd and 3rd persons and gender for the 2nd singular and 3rd plural. The prefix conjugation in Biblical Hebrew normally indicates non-past tense or imperfective aspect.
However, early Biblical Hebrew has two additional conjugations, both of which have an extra prefixed letter waw, with meanings more or less reversed from the normal meanings. That is, "vav + prefix conjugation" has the meaning of a past (particularly in a narrative context), and "vav + suffix conjugation" has the meaning of a non-past, opposite from normal (non-vav) usage. This apparent reversal of meaning triggered by the vav prefix led to the early term vav-conversive (ו' ההיפוך). The modern understanding, however, is somewhat more nuanced, and the term vav-consecutive is now used.
This Hebrew prefix, spelled with the letter ו (vav), is normally a conjunction with the meaning of "and" or "and the". Although always appearing in unpointed texts as a simple vav, it has various pronunciations depending on meaning and phonetic context. Specifically:
Example:
Used with verbs, the prefix may have a second function, having the effect of altering the tense and/or aspect of the verb. This may be its sole function, e.g. in the beginning of a narrative; or it may be combined with the conjunctive function. Weingreen gives the following example. If one considers two simple past narrative statements, one expects to find them in the perfect tense:
Šāmar ("kept") and šāp̄aṭ ("judged") are simple perfect qal forms, and they are the citation forms (lemmas) of these verbs. If however these two sentences are not separate but in one continuous narrative then only the first verb is in the perfect, whereas the following verb ("and he judged") is in the imperfect (yišpôṭ) with a prefixed vav:
Conversely, in a continuous narrative referring to the future, the narrative tense will be the imperfect, but this becomes a perfect after the conjunction: