Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Dear Rolf,

Thank you for your helpful answers to myself and to Paul. I was 
interested in your observations on philosophy of science - I was also 
originally trained in natural sciences.

You wrote to Paul: "Regarding WAYYIQTOL and tense, there are just two 
possibilities, either it is past tense or it is not. So the Hebrew 
verbs readily lend themself to a Popperian test."

No, surely there are other possibilities. If you falsify the 
hypothesis that WAYYIQTOL is a past tense, you are left with no theory 
for what it is, but it is still something. You still have Duhem's 
problem. Is it an aspect? Is it some strange mixture? Is it something 
new which no-one has defined before? Such falsification does not get 
you very far.

You wrote to me: "I suppose you will not claim that anybody on the 
list who is doing discourse analysis has not already made up his mind 
whether the way-element of WAYYIQTOL is just a conjunction or 
something else. You do not learn the meaning of the way-element by 
discourse analysis, you have to assume this meaning."

I cannot speak in detail for others, but I think that they have 
decided on their understanding of WAYYIQTOL on the basis of the 
evidence rather than a priori. They certainly could do in principle.

Consider the following scenario of someone starting from first 
principles and no presuppositions about verb tense-aspect-modality. 
This person starts by finding a set of parallel passages covering the 
same operations but with different discourse types: the instructions 
for building the tabernacle and the account of its building. He notes 
in the instructions verb forms like YA(:A&EH and W:(F&FH, and that in 
the parallel account these are (mostly) replaced by (F&FH and 
WAY.A(A&. At this stage he is not clear of the differences between 
YA(:A&EH and W:(F&FH, and between (F&FH and WAY.A(A&, but he is 
already realising that the first pair is used in instructional 
contexts and the second pair in past narrative. He will quickly decide 
that the WAY.A(A& form is the commonest verb form used in past 
sequential contexts (although it would be premature at this stage to 
decide whether it is semantically or pragmatically past and 
sequential). This conclusion is something derived from study of the 
text rather than decided a priori. Furthermore, this student would 
have no good reason to think that YA(:A&EH and WAY.A(A& are especially 
closely related, as you seem to insist a priori.

Peter Kirk