Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Rolf,
You've given me plenty to chew on here, and it will likely take all 
day to examine your examples.  Just a couple of comments: 

[snip]
> However, to ascribe a semantic (uncancellable) property "modality" to
> WEQATAL is highly problematic. At least two points must be cleared up
> before one can do that:
> 
> (1) One has to demonstrate that there is a difference between WEQATAL  and
> WE+QATAL used with past meaning. This has never been done and is an
> interesting challenge. In my view there is no difference.

I'd like to hear Galia's take on this.  Waltke-O'Connor, following 
Moran, suggest that weqatal originated as an apodosis 
construction and say flatly that this idea "shines through almost all 
of its uses in Biblical Hebrew" (p.525).  They cover what they call 
"copulative WAW + Suffix Conjugation" beginning on p.540 and 
there do seem to be differences, so I find your statement that "this 
has never been done" curious.

> (2) One has to find clear criteria which can differentiate between future
> meaning and modality. This is difficult, and it seems that a modal analysis
> of WEQATAL is somewhat selfserving, because most verbs with future meaning
> can also, if this is our belief, be interpreted as modals.

On the subject of future as modal, I refer you to Galia's book 
chapter 4.  It seems to me that she (and those she cites) has 
made her case for this idea.  If, as seems to be the case, "future 
meaning" is a subset of "modality" then we don't need these 
differentiating criteria.  The evidence she presents is largely from 
English before diving into Hebrew.  Note especially p. 120-121.

[snip - gotta go spend some time in the passages cited]

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.