Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Galia Hatav <ghatav AT aall.ufl.edu>]

Dave wrote:

>Prof Jung wrote:

>> Dear Peter,
>> unitl I see a strong evidence for Galia's assumption that
>> wayyiqtol is different from English simple past (minus stative verbs),
>> I would agree to what you wrote below. But I think that in English
>> simple past clauses can continue past perfect clauses. Consider:
>>
>> a. John went into the florist shop.
>> b. He had promised mary some flowers.
>> c. She said that she wouldn't forgive him if he forgot.
>>
>> Clause a establishes the reference time for clause b.
>> The reference time of clause c is set to the event time
>> of clause b, which is before the reference time of clause b.
>>
>> If this example can be acceptable to English speakers, then
>> we must say that simple past can continue past perfect.
>
>Yes, clearly it can.  And as Galia points out in her book, we know
>this from pragmatic considerations, not syntactic ones.  Examples
>such as these keep me believing that, while it's true that all
>features of the grammar - syntax, semantics, pragmatics,
>discourse frame and all the rest - have a hand in forming clauses (I
>avoid the term "sentence") and larger units, if we're going to make
>real progress in understanding the syntax of Hebrew verbs we have
>to keep them separate for purposes of study.  [climb down off
>soapbox]
>
>WRT the above clauses, I would suggest that Hebrew would have
>had the first one in a WP (wayyiqtol), the second with an x-qatal,
>and the third with another WP.  What do you think?
>
>Dave Washburn

        I agree, except that (c) has TWO clauses. The second one would be
in qatal.
        Galia
>http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
>A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.
>
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