Biblical Hebrew Forum

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Title: Re: Alviero: tense and time

On  02/22/99 (Alviero: tense and time) Rolf Furuli wrote:


> Alviero Niccacci  wrote (the thread  Re: X-Qatal - wayyiqtol):
> >
>
> >
> > We have here an example of CHRONOLOGICALLY non-sequential wayyiqtol (see
> >my previous posting). A >similar thing is found in the previous verses
> >4-6. There the order of the exposition is peculiar--Judah >defeated the
> >Canaanites and the Perizzites at Bezek (v. 4); they found Adoni-bezek,
> >fought against him >and defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites (v. 5);
> >Adoni-bezek fled, they pursued him etc. (v. 6). The >order is as follows:
> >A (Canaanite-Perizzites), B (Adoni-bezek), A (Canaanites-Perizzites), B
> >>(Adoni-bezek). Therefore the wayyiqtol *wayyimSe'û" in v. 5 has most
> >probably an explicating function >as has *wayyakkû* later in the same
> >verse. I would translate as follows: "ACTUALLY they found >Adoni-bezek at
> >Bezek and fought against him, AND THUS they defeated the Canaanites and
> >the Perizzites. >THEN (Adoni-bezek fled..."
> >
>
> Dear Alviero,
>
> I agree it is very important to differentiate between "tense" and "time".
> The concept "tense" is defined as "a grammaticalization of location in
> time", i.e. it is grammaticalized "time". This means that "tense" is
> connected with the verb *form* (or other morphemes connected with the verb
> signalling a particular tense) and is completely independent of the
> context. The English forms "went" and "thought" are marked for past tense
> and this past tense is uncancellable in any context. True, these forms may
> be used in irreal conditional clauses and other clauses, seemingly being
> used in non-past contexts, but still they signal (+past) tense under the
> particular circumstances.
>
> Based on your differentiation between "time" and "tense" I have the
> following questions:
> (1) Is wayyiqtol a grammaticalized past tense?
> (2) If so, does it have a past meaning in any context*?
> (3) If it is not a past tense, what is then its meaning?
>
> * A common argument regarding anomalous wayyiqtols and other forms is that
> the reason for the unusual meaning is the genre; in poetry .... I have
> never seen a single example from the whole BH where it is demonstrated that
> a particular genre has changed the inherrent meaning of a verb form, but I
> am open for examples. Different genres may tend to use particular forms,
> but do not change their meaning.
>
>
> I would also like to bring three yiqtol examples (RSV):
>
>
> Job 3:3  "Let the day perish wherein I was born (yiqtol) , and the night
> which said,  'A man-child is conceived.'(qatal)»
> Deut. 32:10 ¶  "He found him (yiqtol) in a desert land, and in the howling
> waste of the wilderness; he encircled (yiqtol) him, he cared for (yiqtol)
> him, he kept him (yiqtol) as the apple of his eye."
> Ex. 15:5 The floods cover (sic RSV) them (yiqtol); they went down (qatal)
> into the depths like a stone.
>
> The verbs "perish", "find" and "cover" are telic, and they are used in a
> setting of past time, so their ends must be reached and passed.
> (4) Is yiqtol a tense (for example (+future)?
> (5) If so, how can it be used with past meaning?
> (6) If it is not a tense, what is then its meaning?
>
>
> >Our task is to try to understand and respect his order. That is why a
> >correct syntactical analysis is the >basis of the interpretation. It is
> >only the first step, but a necessary one. Unfortunately this step is
> >>normally neglected.
>
> I agree that a correct syntactical interpretation is important, and and I
> find your syntactic comments and also those of Bryan and others very
> illuminating. However, I think that a syntactic analysis should be the
> second step, and that the first step should be to work with the
> uncancelable properties of the verbal system, namely (+dynamicity),
> (+durativity), (+telicity), (+past) and (+future), and see how these
> properties can help us pin down the meaning of the Hebrew conjugations and

> stems. A combination of this and discourse analysis can for example easily
> help us explain the three yiqtol examples above.
>
>
> Regards
> Rolf
>
>
> Rolf Furuli
> Lecturer in Semitic languages
> University of Oslo

Dear Rolf,

Thanks for your comment.
1) I do not think that I need or can prove that wayyiqtol is the narrative form in BH--as is simple past in English. In my view narrative wayyiqtol is a real TENSE. It places an event in the axis of the past (TIME); it further indicates that the information it conveys is a single event--not repeated.
Is this what you call "a grammaticalized past tense"? If so, my reply to your first question is yes.

2) Yes, NARRATIVE wayyiqtol has past meaning in any context. I found it necessary to distinguish NARRATIVE wayyiqtol from CONTINUATION wayyiqtol.
Narrative wayyiqtol is the one which both begins the mainline of communication and also carries it on in a chain until the writer decides to shift to a secondary level of communication. The reasons for that shift are various. As I mentioned previously, both Joüon and gave a listof  different cases and motifs for that shift.
Continuation wayyiqtol, on the other hand, is the one which carries on a non-wayyiqtol verbform or even a non-verbal sentence. Continuative wayyiqtol is not a tense in the sense that it does not have a definite time value by its own but assumes the one of the preceding verbform.
An example may explain this difference. Let us compare 1 Sam. 25:1 and 28:3.
1 Sam. 25:1 gives the historical information with a chain of NARRATIVE wayyiqtol:
"(a) Afterwards Samuel died [WAYYIQTOL],
(b) and all Israel gathered (IDEM]
(c) and made lament [IDEM] for him;
(d) and they buried him [IDEM] in Ramah, his home."
1 Sam. 28:3 retrieves the first piece of information with a non-narrative construction; then it goes with CONTINUATION wayyiqtol:
"(a) Now [THE READER SHOULD REMEMBER THAT] Samuel had died [WAW-X-QATAL]
(b) and all Israel had made lament [WAYYIQTOL] for him;
(c) and they had buried him [IDEM] in his own town of Ramah."

It is clear to me 1 Sam 28:3 contains "recovered information", i.e. goes back to something that happend before the main line of narrative expressed bu wayyiqtol. The two wayyiqtol's in this passage carry on the same time value as the preceding waw-x-qatal.

3) My reply to your third question is implied in what I said above. Again, I prefer not to engage in theory unless theory is directly drawn from texts. Not to make things too long, I invite you to consider three syntactic settings that in my opinion are capable of showing the function of wayyiqtol in contrast with other verbforms:
- a) Parallel passages in Exodus containing God's instructions and then their realization by Moses and collaborators. Take e.g. 26:1 ff. versus 36:8 ff.  Put the texts in paralel columns and see how the verbforms correspond from one column (direct speech, instructions) to the other (historical narrative, realization of the instructions). May I refer to my _Syntax_ ##58-60.
- b) Passages containing historical narrative versus passages containing oral narrative (in direct speech) concerning the same event, e.g. 2 Sam 12:26 (historical narrative) versus 12:27 (oral report), and other pasages discussed in _Syntax_ ##22-23.
- c) Cases of wayyiqtol versus x-qatal of the same root referring to the same event, e.g.  Gen 1:27; Job 32:2-3 etc., see _Syntax_ #48.

From the beginning of my study, I decided to concentrate on prose texts and to leave aside poetry for the moment. Simply I felt that if I wanted to understand something of the verbal system in BH, and not intended to teach what I had been taught and was the doctrine of the standard grammars, I had to move from the more clear to the less clear. In the last chapter of my _Syntax_ I discussed the verbal system of poetry on the basis of some authorities who mailny based themselves on the Ugaritic-Canaanite usage. Following U. Cassuto, I reviewed passages where different verbforms of the same root match one another in adjacent lines and apparently refer to the same event, i.e. yiqtol // qatal (Hos. 5:5; Psa. 38:12), qatal // yiqtol (Psa 93:3), wayyiqtol // weqatal (Am. 7:4), qatal // wayyiqtol (Psa. 29:10). Recently I have begun to move on to poetry and see how the verbal system of the prose works in poetry. I must say that I am now more confident than I was before as to the possibility of detecting a verbal system in poetry, but one needs to take into account certain phenomena that are peculiar to poetry. Actually, I think petry is somehow special in every language.

Now, applying the verbal system of prose to the texts of poetry you refer to, I would analyse as follows:
- Job 3:3 "Perish [VOLITIVE YIQTOL] the day on which I was born [YIQTOL], And the night one said [QATAL],  A male has been conceived [QATAL]!"--yiqtol marks the process of being born (differently from Jer. 20:14, where qatal is used), while the qatal expresses single events.
- Similarly, in Deut. 32:10 the yiqtol's may indicate an habit or be descriptive in the past. "[EVERY TIME] He was finding him... he was encircling him, he used to care for him, he was keeping him as the apple of his eye." The same in v. 11: " Like an eagle is used to stir up its nest, to flutter over its young, to spread out its wings, to lift them up on its pinion" etc.
- Exod. 15:5 is descriptive: "The floods were covering them [YIQTOL], AND FINALLY they went down [QATAL] into the depths like a stone."

I am glad that you acknowledge the importance of syntactic analysis. On the other hand, I am uneasy with your idea that prior to it one has to "work with the uncancelable properties of the verbal system..."--i.e. with semantics, if I understand correctly.  No, I do not think this is necessary, or even advisable. There are only a few cases in the languages that I know in which semantics is important as far as the use and function of the verbforms is concerned. In classical languages and also in Hebrew, the stative versus non-stative roots; in ancient Egyptian, motion verbs versus other kinds of verbs.

Peace and all good.

Alviero Niccacci

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