Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Peter, 
> 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? 

No, it's just like a narrative in simple past in English.  The flow of 
thought is what gives the indications of sequence, not the form of 
the verb.  If we view it this way, we don't just explain 97% of the 
cases, we explain virtually all of them with a unified theory.  I don't 
understand why some find that idea so distasteful.

(Is that what is implied by "no semantic 
> difference"?) 

I don't know, because I don't use this expression.

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? 

A simple past is going to be the form of choice for sequential 
narrative in any language, because it just says "x happened" 
without any deeper implications.  See my paper "Chomsky's 
Separation of Syntax and Semantics" available from my web page 
(follow the "credentials" link) for further examples.

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%.

That's what my view actually does.  Once again, I want to ask, 
because I still haven't seen an answer: is sequentiality a 
*necessary* component of the wayyiqtol form?  If so, why?

> If you are interested in analogies, I suppose I am at least very 
> roughly equating wayyiqtol with English past simple and Greek aorist, 

Yes!  Neither has sequentiality as a necessary component.

> 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? 

In English I think it's pretty clear.  "I went to the store.  I bought 
some bread.  I came home.  I made a sandwich."  These appear to 
be sequential events.  Now, try this one: "I went to the store.  I got 
some bread.  I forgot my checkbook.  I put the bread back.  I went 
home."  The same verb forms, but it's clear from the context that 
the forgotten checkbook happened before the trip to the store.  
However, there's nothing in the simple past tense of "forgot" that 
will tell us this.  It has to be discerned from the context that this 
statement is not sequential with the others.  It's easy enough to 
demonstrate such features with the Greek aorist as well.  Now, 
let's rephrase: "I went to the store.  I got some bread.  I had 
forgotten my checkbook, so I put the bread back.  I went home."  
The pragmatic context is the same and so is the pragmatic force.  
However, the difference in tense stresses the fact that the 
forgetting occurred before the trip to the store.  So it explicitly 
looks back at that previous event.  Now let's do it this way: "I went 
to the store.  I got some bread.  I discovered that I had forgotten 
my checkbook.  I put the bread back.  I went home."  Now we're 
back to a simple past tense, "discovered," that the pragmatic 
context tells us is probably sequential.  The past perfect is 
subordinated into the object-clause of "discovered," so 
syntactically "discovered" is still the main verb of the highest 
clause node.  However, the past perfect still points to an event that, 
it tells us explicitly, happened before some of the others.  Thus, in 
all these cases, sequentiality is built into the pragmatic context of 
the narrative, but is NOT coded into the verb form itself.  This is my 
view of the WP.  There's nothing inherent in it that requires 
sequentiality.  It's the form of choice for sequential narrative 
precisely because it doesn't give any indications of syntactic 
interrelations or dependence or subordination.  And again, this 
approach does actually seem to explain virtually all the (non-poetic) 
uses of it.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.