Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT SIL.ORG]

My problem in more detail is as follows: Some people are insisting 
that "wayyiqtol does not mean sequential" and "X-qatal does not mean 
non-sequential". If so, how can they explain why in sequential 
contexts one is generally used (97% say) and in non-sequential 
contexts the other is used (at least 90% I am sure). Why? Is this free 
stylistic variation? (Is that what is implied by "no semantic 
difference"?) Probably not if the percentages are really like that 
(though I accept that the 97% includes many uncertain cases). Is it a 
question of fronting a component for topicalisation, with the choice 
between qatal and wayyiqtol dependent on word order? Possibly, but why 
such a high correlation with sequentiality? Perhaps you can 
hypothesise another semantic distinction, and I wish you well in your 
search. But I would be surprised if you can come up with something new 
(rather than a refinement of the sequentiality distinction) which 
explains things better than 97%.

If you are interested in analogies, I suppose I am at least very 
roughly equating wayyiqtol with English past simple and Greek aorist, 
and X-qatal with English past perfect and Greek pluperfect. I am sure 
you can find many counter-examples to such identifications, but they 
are perhaps a starting point. Now, in English, what is the difference 
between past simple and past perfect, and how can we tell what it is? 
Or to keep native speaker intuition out of the question, how about the 
same question for NT Greek aorist vs. pluperfect? Suppose we come up 
with a rule which explains the difference 97% of the time (counting 
examples in the NT, or a wider corpus if you prefer) but to which 
there are counter-examples. Do we have to say that such a rule (which 
is probably the one in the textbooks) is invalid?

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[5]: Gen 4:1, X + qatal (Peter)
Author:  dwashbur AT nyx.net at internet
Date:    10/02/1999 12:23


Peter,
> The problem I see with your sort of approach is that it explains 
> nothing.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.  In English we have a "simple" 
past tense that is not marked for anything in particular; in Greek 
we have the aorist, which is essentially the same thing; my 
approach sees the WP as comparable (though not equivalent) to
this type of form.  Please develop "explains nothing" in more detail?

At least you are trying to make some sort of syntactic
> distinction between wayyiqtol and X-qatal. Some contributors seem to 
> be trying to say that there is no semantic difference between the
> different verb forms but all is a matter of pragmatics.

Yes.  I assume thata different form must signal something, we're 
just not sure what yet.

<snip>