Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Douglas L Kasten <doug.kasten AT juno.com>]

BHListers,

On Mon, 10 May 1999 13:41:31 -0700 "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
writes:
> Peter wrote:
> > Would you care to justify the following, Dave? What is your 
> evidence 
> > that wayyiqtol is "clearly a transformed-and-moved constituent"?

snip
 
> Syntactically, 
> it only makes sense to begin with the most basic form of the verb, 
> which is the qatal.  All other forms, including those with W-, are 
> made by adding something to it, so if we want to discover the 
> "basic" word order in Hebrew we will want to start with the qatal 
> and see if we can discover what "normal" word order is in clauses 
> using it.  I think it's safe to say that SVO is the general order of 
> the 
> day in such clauses.  At this level, markedness (whether in 
> narrative, poetry or whatever) really has little or nothing to do 
> with it.

Dave,

I'm not saying I agree with your assertion that qatal is the 'most basic
form' of the verb, though depending how you define 'most basic' I'd
easily grant you the point.  Now that I've taken care of my
non-agreement, I'd like to move on to my disagreement.

I don't think it follows that, given you have isolated the most basic
verbal form in qatal, the sentences in which it's used necessarily mark
the most basic word order.  Would you please offer some kind of support
for what you apparently take as another 'given'?  It'd be helpful because
right now I'm not buying.

Peace,
Doug 

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