Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Moon-Ryul Jung" <moon AT saint.soongsil.ac.kr>]

Dear Peter, 
I really enjoyed many threads on Hebrew verb forms, 
of which you have been active participants. Many thanks for
that. Your conclusion seems to be:

>that "Sequentiality is not the semantic meaning of 
> wayyiqtol," but rather that wayyiqtol is the default unmarked past 
> tense, which is usually but not always sequential by pragmatic 
> implicature

If we ignore stative verbs in English, English simple past
verbs behave similarly as wayyiqtol, don't they?

Respectfully
Moon-Ryul Jung
Assistant Professor
Dept of Computer Science
Soongsil University
Seoul, Korea
> whereas other past tense forms such as X-qatal are 
> semantically marked for background, temporal overlay or however one 
> might put it.
> 

> Peter Kirk
> 
> 
> ______________________________ Reply Separator 
> _________________________________
> Subject: Re: Tidbits from Ruth
> Author:  furuli AT online.no at internet
> Date:    25/04/1999 16:17
> 
> 
> Dear Peter and Randall,
> 
> 
> The only possible conclusion that can be drawn from your posts is that 
> sequentality is not *the semantic meaning* of wayyiqtol but only a 
> pragmatic implicature! The requirement for sequentiality as a semantic 
> meaning would be that wayyiqtols *allways* would express a sequence (the
> following wayyiqtol would always express an action occurring after the one
> expressed by the previous wayyiqtol). However, you both state that this is
> not the case with particular verbs.
> 
> I am not sure that you agree in my conclusion, because you both seem to say
> that "This use of wayyiqtol is hendiadys", and that solves everything! I
> have no problems with the term hendiadys and neither with your 
> interpretation of it, but the reason for your interpretation is your 
> knowledge of the world (which is pragmatics), and in any case will a use of
> one wayyiqtol after another with a non-sequential meaning *definitely* show
> that sequentiality is not a semantic meaning of wayyiqtol.
> 
> Could both of you please confirm or deny the following proposition: 
> "Sequentiality is not the semantic meaning of wayyiqtol."
> 
> 
> Regards
> Rolf
> 
> 
> Rolf Furuli
> Lecturer in Semitic languages
> University of Oslo
> <snip>