Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Rodney Duke,


You wrote:

>Dear Colleagues,
>A form of this post appeared at the end of last Saturday's list of
>messages.  I had hoped to get a response from Furuli and Hatav, and
>possibly from Niccacci, Washburn, Kirk, Martin, et al.  I'm not sure if
>the silence meant rejection or what.  (Rocine responded and Randall Buth
>sent me some bibliography that will show the following suggestion to be
>wrong.  Even such corrective comments are welcome!)

        I have a problem with your general approach as I don't believe in
defining aspect in terms of perspective.  I define it in terms of
relationship between the R(eference)-Time and the E(vent)-Time.
>
>More on wayyiqtol: [new (?) suggestion at point #4, below]
>
>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 would simplify our understanding of wayyiqtol.
>
>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 a partial view of the 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,
        See comment above.

>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.)
        I adopt the modal logic definition of modality, which has to do
with quantification over possible worlds.  It is possible for a modal
sentence to express a situation which has not yet become actual, but not
necessarily so.

If
>an event is not yet viewed as complete, then it would not yet belong to
>realis/actuality.
>[To use different terms, perhaps yiqtol presents a perspective of ACTION
>and qatal presents a perspective of EVENT.  This synthesis also seems to
>tie in well with Rocine's thesis that yiqtol is fientive and qatal is
>attributive.]
        Again, I don't believe perspective could account for the
differences in truth conditions between sentences with different aspects.

>
>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.)
        Yes. You are representing my view (adopted from Kamp) accurately.

>
>*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 story
>in real time as emerging and as not yet actual, since it is not yet
>complete;
>therefore, the verb form to use would have to be yiqtol.
>
        This seems to be Driver's intention in using the term nascency,
explaining wayyiqtol clauses as reporting events seen as unfolding before
the readers eyes. See McFall for critical objection to this analysis.

>Such a thesis, if correct, simplifies our understanding of wayyiqtol.
>The result of this line of thinking is that the wa+doubling is not seen
>as "converting" anything, not a future to a past or a perfect to an
>imperfect or a modal to a nonmodal.  The wa+doubling (whether or not an
>invention of the Masoretes - Furuli) just seems to function as a marker
>of historical narration,  of forward-moving, sequentiality, maybe akin
>to Arabic fa as some of you have described it.  Perhaps the best way to
>capture this in English would be with the present tense (i.e. the
>historic present): "They go to him and they stand before him and they
>say..."
        Unless you want to suggest that the biblical narrator has a style
similar to Daymon Ranyon's, this realy cannot work. The historical present
is used in English (and other modern languages) WITHIN a story which is
told in past tense. Its function is not clear yet, but it is obvious that
it has some significance in terms of evaluating the situations narrated
(see Debora Shifrin for a possible analysis.)
>
>What do you think?

        Sorry, but as you can see I do not agree with the whole approach,
so I realy cannot say much about it (which explains why I had not answered
you before this letter).
        Galia
>
>
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