Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rodney K. Duke" <dukerk AT appstate.edu>]

Dear Colleagues,

More on wayyiqtol

I would like to offer a synthesis of what I have understood of some of
the arguments of Furuli and Hatav and to offer one more suggestion,
which might shed light on the enigma of wayyiqtol.  (I know that I
missed about a month's discussion on aspect and wayyiqtol, so the
following thoughts might be redundant.  If so, I apologize.)

1) If we accept as correct the concept that 'aspect' reveals the
speaker's perspective of an event/action, and that the 'aspect' of
yiqtol is emerging/partial action as opposed to seeing the action as a
whole event which would be expressed by the qatal (I believe this is
what Furuli has argued), then this concept ties in well with Hatav's
thesis that,

2) yiqtol is modal--understanding modality in a broad sense as that
which has not yet become actual (I think this is what Hatav says.)  If
an event is not yet viewed as complete, then it would not yet belong to
realis/actuality.

3) Hatav also seems to be correct when she sees wayyiqtol as
establishing a new Reference time that initiates a forward moving
sequence, as opposed to a sequence created by a backward connection.
(Sorry, if this is not what she said.  Our library does not have her
work and I have only been able to skim part of it on an occasion.)

4) I would add one more suggestion. In storytelling, particularly in
oral storytelling, it is not unusual for the narrator to assume a
Speaking time that is con-temporary with the events being told.  (In
Hatav's terms this artificial Speaking time (distinct from the real
Speaking time of the narrator) would coincide with the Reference time
and Event time.)  When reporting an historical narrative from this
perspective, the Hebrew narrator would be viewing/presenting the event
as emerging and as not yet actual, since it is not yet complete;
therefore, the verb form to use would have to be yiqtol.

The result of this line of thinking is that the wa+doubling is not seen
in any way as "converting" a future to a past (as has long been
discounted) or a perfect to an imperfect or a modal to a nonmodal.  As
Furuli has argued, a yiqtol is a yiqtol whether prefaced by wa+doubling
or not.  The wa+doubling (whether or not an invention of the Masoretes -
Furuli) just seems to function as a marker of historical,
forward-moving, sequentiality, maybe akin to Arabic fa as some of you
have described it.  It seems the best way to capture this in English is
with the present tense (i.e. the historic present): "They go to him and
they stand before him and they say..."

What do you think?  (I'm not a linguist as Niccacci, Hatav, Furuli,
DeCaen, and many others of you are.  I'm just tossing this out as a
suggestion.)

--------------------
A question on translating the qatal with a wayyiqtol into English:

(It makes sense to me to see how an initial qatal can establish the
state, background, or summary/intro of a following historical narrative
in which the action begins with a wayyiqtol.  And it communicates well
in English to translate a background X-qatal as a past or past
perfect.)  I'm at a loss, however, on how to translate into English the
sense--as I now see it--of a wayyiqtol event that is completed by a
qatal.  For example, given the thesis above, I would now understand a
construction such as found in Gen 1:5 as:

"And God calls [wayyiqtol: new R time, action moving 'forward'] the
light 'day', and the darkness he call/s/ed [X-qatal: same R time, but
event completed] 'night'."

How can we capture the sense of the qatal, above, in English?

Rodney



--
Rodney K. Duke
Dept. of Phil. & Rel., Appalachian State Univ., Boone, NC 28608
(O) 828-262-3091, (FAX) 828-262-6619, dukerk AT appstate.edu