Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

Dear Rolf,

Many thanks for your succinct description of your method, which has 
clarified several things which I was not understanding before. It 
makes me regret that I had to use a somewhat negative tone in my last 
posting on this subject.

I am left with just this concern. It seems that no-one else on the 
list accepts your arguments. I think this is because they, like me, do 
not agree with your generalisation from a few minimal pairs that 
"WAYYIQTOL and YIQTOL behave similarly as far as ET/RT is concerned, 
and QATAL and WEQATAL behave similarly". But, as you have now made 
clear, the questions you have recently been putting to the list 
recently expect those who reply to implicitly accept this part of your 
conclusion, which underlies your mapping from verb paradigms to 
aspects. Therefore those (all of us, it seems) who do not accept your 
conclusion are ruled out from answering your question. So please do 
not claim that your conclusions are confirmed by the fact that no-one 
refuted them in answer to your questions.

Peter Kirk