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  • From: peter_kirk AT sil.org
  • To: <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re[3]: Telic YIQTOLs WITH past meaning
  • Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 12:40:33 -0400


Dear Rolf,

See my comments below.


______________________________ Reply Separator
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Subject: Re[2]: Telic YIQTOLs WITH past meaning
Author: <furuli AT online.no> at Internet
Date: 01/10/1999 15:29


Peter Kirk wrote



>Dear Rolf,
>
>I feel bad about answering this without reading it all. But you seem
>to have ignored the fact that +EREM and B:+EREM are regularly followed
>by YIQTOL. See GKC 107c, 152r. I guess this is because the idea of
>"before" carries futurity and/or modality. That is to say, the event
>time of the subordinate clause is after the event time of the main
>clause. I have a feeling that in Hebrew the time of a subordinate
>clause is regularly judged in relation to that of the main clause
>rather than directly related to the overall deictic point. Thus in the
>same way QATAL is regularly used in subordinate clauses introduced
>with KIY even where the main clause is future and/or modal. Have I got
>that right? If so, I really think we don't need to go into any of your
>other theories to explain Jer 47:1.


Dear Peter,


Your points above are not an explanation of the problem I posed, namely,
how telic YIQTOLs could be used for events that ware completed ( provided
that we either view YIQTOL as an imperfective aspect or a non-past tense).
Given one of these definitions, it should not be possible to use a YIQTOL
in the mentioned situations.

PK: My point is that a non-past tense is appropriate in the
subordinate clause because the events were not completed at the time
of the main clause events.

I am aware of what GCK and other grammars say about +EREM and B+ERM, and my
first post included an implicit criticism of these comments. We should
check out the information ourselves and not rely on information that has
been repeated from one grammar to the next, from the last century or even
from the Middle Ages, and which never has been thorougly checked.

PK: Indeed. But we should not reject them without adequate evidence. I
was relying on GKC only for its statistics (your FREQUENTLY) and not
for its explanation.

GKC 107 c says: "The imperfect is FREQUENTLY (my bold script) used in this
way /to express actions that continued throughout a longer or shorter
period/ after the particles )Z then, +RM not yet, B+RM before." At most,
this is an observation that explains absolutely nothing as to WHY a YIQTOL
is used in these cases. And further, the observation itself is
questionable. A search revealed only 18 examples of )Z followed by a
YIQTOL with past meaning,14 examples of B+RM and 7 examples of +RM
followed by YIQTOLs with past meaning. I have a list of more than 500
examples of YIQTOL with past meaning, and I expect this number to be more
than doubled when I finish my corpus. This means that less than 4 percent
of the YIQTOLs with past meaning occur after these particles.

PK: Well, you can prove anything with statistics, it seems. Here, not
only is your interpretation doubtful, also your raw data are not
correct. Did you simply search for +RM followed by Y? There are many
1st and 2nd person YIQTOLs here. The results I have are:

+RM YIQTOL 13 times QATAL 2 times (Gen 24:15, 1 Sam 3:7)
B+RM YIQTOL 35 times QATAL 2 times (Psa 90:2, Pro 8:25)
infinitive construct once (Zep 2:2)
M+RM infinitive construct once (Hag 2:15)

Thus I would replace GKC's "frequently" by "regularly" with just a few
exceptions. Of course this is only a small proportion of all YIQTOLs,
but more to the point it is all the occurrences of +RM. I have not
looked at )Z which is not directly relevant, there is no particular
reason why it should pattern like +RM.

Let me add that I found 4 examples of YIQTOL after +RM and B+RM with
present meaning and 17 examples with future meaning....

PK: I don't understand. By the very meaning of +RM all of these
examples have future meaning compared with the time of the events in
the immediate context. I think the statistics clearly demonstrate that
the relationship to the overall deictic point is irrelevant.

..I also found 4 QATALs with past meaning after the two particles .
Regarding )Z I found 45 YIQTOLs with future meaning after it, 34 QATALs
with past meaning and 3 QATALs with future meaning. So the particles are
used both with YIQTOLs and QATALs with past and future meaning. We can
therefore draw no conclusion as to why a YIQTOL is used in Jer 47:1
by the mere presence of B+RM.

PK: It is clear to me that the YIQTOL here is simply the normal rule
after +RM. Now you might want to investigate why there is a QATAL in a
few exceptional cases.

<snip>

Peter Kirk





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