Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Vincent DeCaen <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>]

mon ami, bryan,

I'm not convinced there's no difference in Ex 10. one thing that we
need is the semantic representation of `ad-matay. then we're cooking.
one thing that i'm interested in is whether it's always progressive
looking, or can it also be retrospective, like french depuis quand.
let's just assume the "until" sense here in both cases for
simplicity.... in other words, in the ballpark of modals like "if"
etc. 

there is something like this that Revell noted in his landmark
descriptive piece, 1989. he said that there was a difference in a
modal context between the use of qatal and yiqtol. he associated the
qatal with counterfactuals and yiqtol with plain hypotheticals. this
seems to be descriptively adequate with 'im "if". it would be
interesting if this extended system wide in some way.

notice that in english, we also get the distinction (substituting
qatal/past, yiqtol/nonpast <nudge, nudge> ):

(1)     (a) if I am a teacher,...       (b) if I be a teacher, ...
(2)     (a) if I was a teacher, ...     (b) if I were a teacher,...

depending on what dialect you use, you'll have a separate modal
paradigm as in (b). but in any case, the examples in (2) entail the
counterfactual, while in (1) the hypothetical is only a presupposition
(this means there is a semantic feature in (2) that is absent in (1),
correlated with the past/qatal.).

the reason, moreover, that this interests me is that there ought to be
a connection with the apparent tense reversals in the sequential
forms, wayyiqtol and weqatal. I know, in fact, that this is the right
avenue to pursue. what I need is the rigorous tense-logic model of the
interaction between mood and tense, and it should fall out as a
special case---this is an active area of research for me right now.

it should also fall out from the mood/tense representation of THEN.
notice in this respect v11 in 1 samuel ch.1, where both AND-THEN and
IF-THEN require weqatal. I know this is the right answer, and I hope
to have something worked out by the time my thesis goes to press in
1999 (knock on wood).

to come back to the exodus ex, could it be that refusing pharaoh can't
possibly go on, while moses could very well be a pain in the
you-know-what for a while yet? something like that?

cheers
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Vincent DeCaen, Ph.D.  <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~decaen/hsei/intro.html
c/o Deparment of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
4 Bancroft Ave., 2d floor, University of Toronto, Toronto ON, M5S 1A1
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

...the idea of a perfect language risks becoming nothing more than a
waste bin for prejudices which have not survived confrontation with
linguistic reality.
  --Mark Sainsbury, "Russell", 1979: p15