Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Studium Biblicum Franciscanum <sbfnet AT netvision.net.il>]

 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


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