---
title: "Semantic Ambiguity of So-Called \"Stative Verbs\" — Sato 2021"
description: "The full text is not in our library; this card rests on the repository abstract. Grammars set Qal qatal (active, \"fientive\") against qatil/qatul…"
authors: ["Jun Sato"]
year: 2021
venue: "TSpace (University of Toronto)"
source: "http://hdl.handle.net/1807/107415"
licence: "Open access (free to read); no CC licence stated — read only (TSpace (University of Toronto))"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hbo-2021-sato-semantic-ambiguity-so-called-stative/"
---
[Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hbo-2021-sato-semantic-ambiguity-so-called-stative/)

[home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2021](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2021/page/4/) / Semantic Ambiguity of So-Called "Stative Verbs" in Biblical Hebrew: Beyond Active vs. Stative Binary Opposition for the Qatal and Qatil Forms in the Qal Stem

# Semantic Ambiguity of So-Called "Stative Verbs" in Biblical Hebrew: Beyond Active vs. Stative Binary Opposition for the Qatal and Qatil Forms in the Qal Stem

**Authors:** Jun Sato · **Year:** 2021 · **Venue:** PhD thesis, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto **Link:** [hdl.handle.net/1807/107415](http://hdl.handle.net/1807/107415) · **Licence:** free to read, no CC licence stated — summary only

[**0** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W7133034447) OpenAlex · 2026-10-14 · [TSpace (University of Toronto)](https://openalex.org/S4306400261)

- [Publisher's page](http://hdl.handle.net/1807/107415)
- [PDF](https://utoronto.scholaris.ca/bitstreams/a5aa8cc9-a9ed-4a3d-a052-8a5f9fb5ace7/download)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7133034447)

**Authors (1)**

1. [Jun Sato](https://openalex.org/A5127586470) h 0 · 0 citations · 1 works

Citations and author metrics: OpenAlex, 2026-10-14; authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The full text is not in our library; this card rests on the repository abstract. Grammars set Qal *qatal* (active, "fientive") against *qatil/qatul* (stative), yet many *qatil/qatul* verbs denote events, not states, which has long "troubled Hebraists" (abstract). Using lexical-aspect theory (Rothstein), the thesis sorts every *qatil/qatul* predicate into states, activities, achievements and accomplishments, and shows how participles, directive-volitive moods, narrative sequence and punctual modifiers shift a stative verb to a dynamic reading. Diachronically it argues that an older stative function and a newer perfect function coexisted in the Northwest Semitic suffix conjugation, the stative being a remnant of the Proto-Semitic verbal adjective. Ideas are provisional.

## Ideas

- I1. Give each Qal *qatil/qatul* lemma in the Torah dictionary a default aktionsart (state / activity / achievement / accomplishment), and list the contextual shifters (wayyiqtol, imperative, punctual time adverb) that move it to an event reading; e.g. a stative like "be heavy" or "be old" read as "became …" in wayyiqtol.
- I2. In glossing and in the world, read a stative verb in wayyiqtol as an inchoative event ("grew old", "became strong"), and in bare qatal as a present or resulting state; check the rule against JPS 1917 on the Torah's stative lemmas.

## For Mova

I1 goes into the Torah dictionary (the dictionary builder, [languages/hbo/10-lexicon.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/10-lexicon/)) as an aspect field; I2 into [languages/hbo/06-verb.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/06-verb/) (stative verbs, qatal meaning) and into the English gloss and event reading behind `tools/macula/src/prag.rs`.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{sato2021semantic,
  title = {{Semantic Ambiguity of So-Called "Stative Verbs" in Biblical Hebrew: Beyond Active vs. Stative Binary Opposition for the Qatal and Qatil Forms in the Qal Stem}},
  author = {Sato, Jun},
  booktitle = {TSpace (University of Toronto)},
  year = {2021},
  url = {http://hdl.handle.net/1807/107415}
}
```

- [← previous Self-Guided Contrastive Learning for BERT Sentence Representations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kim-2021-self-guided-contrastive-learning-bert/)
- [next → SemEval-2021 Task 1: Lexical Complexity Prediction](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/shardlow-2021-semeval-2021-task-1-lexical/)
- [↑ back to papers of 2021](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2021/page/4/)