Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Alviero Niccacci <sbfnet AT netvision.net.il>]

Dear Moon-Ryul Jung,

please find my reply inside your message.

On  06/04/99 (RE: welo'+qatal as negative wayyiqtol (To Niccatti))
Moon-Ryul Jung wrote:


> 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.


REPLY________My translation is the one I gave above, "while Moses went up
to God," not "Moses had gone up to God." I understand that Hatav's theory
is similar to mine but I did not have the opportunity of studying it as yet.


> (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"?
>


REPLY________Do you agree that the sentence "while Moses went up to God" is
syntactically dependent on "Thus, Israel encamped there"? This is what I
mean by syntactic dependency.
        If I made my position clear, I would like to stop here. I do not
wish to argue.

Peace and all good.
Alviero Niccacci