Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Dear Randall,

I'm sorry, I didn't get your whole argument as it was so compressed. 
But looking again, I do not agree that this is decisive. My tentative 
hypothesis would be that when the present tense was used as historic 
this became specifically indicated by fronting it in the sentence and 
linking it with the waw conjunction - this explains why the form 
without the conjunction (yiqtol) is not mixed with wayyiqtol. At some 
time in the development of the language, I would suggest, only 
wayyiqtol and not yiqtol alone became acceptable for "historic 
present", and so qatal came to be used for cases where the verb could 
not be fronted (e.g. a special focus on the noun subject, either as 
part of a contrasting pair or in introducing a new topic) or where waw 
could not sensibly be prefixed (e.g. start of a speech). As wayyiqtol 
had come to be specifically used as "historic present", its use in 
non-past contexts lost favour, except occasionally in poetry, and 
weqatal was introduced. And I am talking about a time when participles 
were not in regular use as a present tense, hence no participles.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re: More on wayyiqtol-resent
Author:  ButhFam AT compuserve.com at internet
Date:    16/04/1999 09:50


> On the other hand, Randall's comment "'present' is not the way hebrew 
> storytelling is done... BH tells Hebrew stories in the past" simply
> begs the question: in so far as BH tells Hebrew stories with
> wayyiqtol, this statement is true if wayyiqtol is a past tense, but 
> false if it is a present tense!

peter, i think you missed my point.
there were several tests given to show that "present" is not the force of 
the form.
e.g. vayyomer vs X---amar, but never vayyomer vs. X---yomer/yomar.

randall buth