Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - RE: welo'+qatal as negative wayyiqtol (To Niccatti)

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Studium Biblicum Franciscanum <sbfnet AT netvision.net.il>
  • To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: welo'+qatal as negative wayyiqtol (To Niccatti)
  • Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 08:39:17 +0200

On 06/03/99 (RE: welo'+qatal as negative wayyiqtol (To Niccatti) Moon-Ryul Jung wrote:

> Dear Alivero, thanks for your clarification. Let me clarify what I wrote
> about logic, because I think it is important to understand negatives.


< ... .

> [Alviero]
> > As fas as I understand, both sentences type "He came," and "He did
> > not come," are acceptable answers to a question type "Did Peter come?"
> > Both provide a piece of information, either positive or negative. What we
> > get through linguistic signs is information, isn't it.
> >
> [Moon]
> Yes, both provide a piece of information. But that information may be

> a state or an event. "He came" refers to a particular event. Its
> negation, "He did not come", refers to not happening of a particular

> event. If this "not happening of a particular event" can be considered a
> state, it follows that the negative statement cannot move the reference time
> forward; Statemenst that describe states cannot move the reference time
> forward.
>
> But as you said, we may have to examine in more depth if negative statements always describe states.



Dear Moon-Ryul Jung,

It is OK that in historical narrative x-qatal conveys background information; however to call it a "state" rather than an "event" sounds strange to me. Consider e.g. Exod. 19:2b-3: "Thus, Israel encamped (wayyiqtol) there, before the mountain, while Moses went up (waw-x-qatal) to God."

IMO, it is not a question of state versus event. It is rather one of syntactical dependence versus independence. Background x-qatal (offline) is syntactically dependent on foreground wayyiqtol (mainline).
Syntactical dependence is distinct from grammatical dependence, which happens when qatal is governed by a subordinating conjunction like *'im, ki, 'a$er* etc. , but it is no less real.
Syntactical dependence means that x-qatal can not stay alone in the text but needs rely on a main sentence having wayyiqtol, exactly as the sentence "while Moses went up to God" depends on "Thus, Israel encamped there."

Peace and all good.
Alviero Niccacci


Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Tel. +972 - 2 - 6282 936
POB 19424 - 91193 - Jerusalem Fax +972 - 2 - 6264 519
Israel

Home Page: http://198.62.75.1/www1/ofm/sbf/SBFmain.html
Email mailto:sbfnet AT netvision.net.il




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page