Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryan Rocine" <596547 AT ican.net>]

hi Vince,

i had an idea the non-past qatal might bring you out.  you really should be
more unpredictable.  ;-)

i really like the Revell piece.  i'm a Revell fan now, thanks to you.  but
of course his arguementation that BH is a tense system is a bit of a
mystery to me.  that's not a snide way of saying i disagree; i really don't
quite get it.  his intro says qatal is a past.  his sections 4.1-2 seem to
prefer a view of the qatal that is perfect(done in the (relative)past and
continuing
to the (relative)present) like Hatav's "parasitic perfect," rather than
past. his explanations in 4.3 and 5 seem kind of
anecdotal: "use of the QTL form...to represent an event that has not yet
taken place is justified because a decision has been made by the
speaker..."  A sort of psychological past?  does that kind of
arguementation fly nowadays?   (wow, inspired by Revell, i shared a little
blurb i did on the pragmatics of le'mor with Cindy Miller, and she
just wasted the anecdotal stuff.) this psychological qatal is the one you
are suggesting to explain Exo 10:3, right?  i don't know how to design a
generativist proof, but can you really do it?  does it really have anything
to do with `ad matay?

Shalom,
Bryan


Vince wrote:
> 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.
> 
<big snip>
> 
> 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?
> 


B. M. Rocine
Associate Pastor
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13208

315-437-6744(w)
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