Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Moon-Ryul Jung" <moon AT saint.soongsil.ac.kr>]

Dear Alviero,
> 
> 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."
> 

(1) I think your theory would suggest the following rendering:

 Israel encamped there before the mountain. Moses had gone up to God...

In this case, "Moses had gone up to God" describes the STATE
consequent to the event of Moses going up to God. In this context or
state, Israel encamped there before the mountain. Maybe I am influenced 
more
by Hatav's theory of x-qatal than by yours. She takes x-qatal as "perfect", 
and
it behaves quite similarly as English perfect. I thought your theory of 
x-qatal
is similar to hers (or she is dependent on you?). It is generally agreed
that "perfect" refers to the state consequent to the associated event. That 
is
the reason why I said x-qatal refers to state. 

(2) About "syntactic dependency". 

> 
> 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."
> 
> 

I do not understand exactly what 
"cannot stay alone in the text but needs rely on
a main sentence" means. Galia Hatav would understand it to mean that
we-x-qatal describes a situation that holds at the reference time that is
already established by the previous statements, i.e. it does not introduce
its own reference time. Do you have in mind a similar thing when you 
talk about "syntactic dependency"?

Moon-Ryul Jung
Assistant Professor
Dept of Computer Science
Soongsil University,
Seoul, Korea 

> Peace and all good.
> 
> Alviero Niccacci
> 
> 
> 
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