Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Rolf Furuli wrote: "...My work is in progress, but I can reveal that I 
have found a completely different pattern for the aspects in Hebrew 
than for English.  Some glimpses: (1) Only yiqtol and wayyiqtol 
intersect the event *before* ET (conative situations). (2) yiqtol, 
wayyiqtol, qatal and weqatal intersects ET at the nucleus or at the 
beginning of ET. (3) Yiqtol, wayyiqtol, qatal, and weqatal intersect 
the event/state *after* ET (This is particularly seen in Piel because 
it is resultative and factitive). Conclusion: Aspect is subjective and 
not objective! The evidence I gather on the basis of the cancelability 
principle indicating that there is just a pragmatic difference between 
yiqtol and wayyiqtol and qatal and weqatal and not a semantic one, is 
increasing."

Thank you for your clear presentation of your argument. But have I 
understood this part correctly? Are you identifying "objective" with 
"semantic" and "subjective" with "pragmatic"?  It looks like you are 
saying that:
1. The method that you have chosen for distinguishing between the 
semantic meanings of yiqtol, wayyiqtol, qatal and weqatal fails to 
find an objective distinction between them.
2. Therefore, there is no objective distinction, everything is 
subjective and pragmatic.

I fear that there is a flaw in your logic here. You assume that the 
method you have chosen is the only possible objective way of 
distinguishing the verb forms, or at least that every possible method 
will give the same result. Your method is no doubt a good one and 
helpful for analysis of many languages. But it is clearly failing to 
analyse Hebrew. You would get a similar result if you tried to analyse 
in terms of tenses a purely aspectual language, or vice versa. I would 
suggest that you try to analyse Hebrew from other directions, using 
distinctions other than those based on reference time and event time. 
If they all seem to fail, then maybe you are right that everything is 
pragmatic. But as some of the more traditional analyses have come 
closer to finding objective distinctions (though granted no-one has 
found the near 100% that you are seeking), that suggests that they are 
closer to finding whatever objective semantic distinctions may exist 
between verb forms.

Rolf immediately continued: "I have started with a study of 
Phoenician, Ugaritic and Accadian to scrutinize the claim that there 
existed a short prefix-form coding for past tense, and that wayyiqtol 
is a continuance of this form. The application of the cancelability 
principle to the material so far, seems to rule out such a preterite, 
because the short form in the material codes for past, present and 
future."

Well, thank you for answering Randall's and other criticisms of my 
version of the historic present hypothesis. But then I am not sure 
that they or I will be convinced by this argument or at least this 
presentation of it.

Peter Kirk