Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Rodney wrote:
> 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.)

I need to apologize more than anybody else; the system that I use 
got hacked severely a few weeks ago, and it's taken an 
unbelievable number of volunteer-hours and not a little hair-pulling 
just to get it up and running again.  If messages bounced here, I 
also apologize for that; I noticed when things finally came back that 
I was unsubscribed.  In any case, I'm back (for whatever that's 
worth) and would like to pick this up at the last point available to 
me:

> 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,

I'm not sure that "aspect" is the best term for it, at least as 
commonly defined, but that could take us far off course if pursued, 
so I'll leave it for now.
 
> 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.)

The only part of this that I disagree with is the "forward moving 
sequence" part.  A new Reference time, yes.  Necessarily moving 
forward, no.  There are too many counter-examples, many of which 
have been raised here.  There's no reason to posit that a new 
reference time has to be subsequent to the one in a previous 
clause, and if we throw that part out then we have a unified view of 
the form that explains all its occurrences.

> 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.

Some examples would help.

> 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.  

But there are differences.  Trying to associate the unknown with 
something known (such as fa) is a natural tendency, but in this 
case I'm not sure how far the association can be carried.  If in fact 
the Arabic particle marks sequentiality - since I don't know Arabic I 
have to take others' word for that - then we would expect to see it 
ONLY in contexts that are clearly sequential.  We don't see this 
with wayyiqtol; we see it in sequences, in back-loops, in 
beginnings of sections or whole books, in resumptive clauses - and 
sequentiality doesn't even come close to explaining these other 
settings, even as redefined by Hatav and others.  The only solution 
to the conundrum that I can see is to take the new R-time part, 
minus the sequentiality part, and run with it.  This is what I've done 
in my own research with very positive results.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.