Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Vincent DeCaen <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>]

turns out SUNY at Buffalo very nice: reminds me of Wilfrid Laurier; except
the pretty lake really makes for a beautiful campus.

paper entitled, "Distinctive Properties of the Biblical Hebrew
Consecutives in Crosslinguistic Perspective: Modal Coordination in Ancient
Egyptian, Fula, Swahili and Zulu" reasonably well received.

i'm convinced that i'm on the right track: linguistic analysis forces you
in this direction. also turns out lots of other systems doing the same
darn thing. met Van Valin (turns out chair of dept) who put me in contact
with others working on modal coordination/tense neutralization.  so looks
like several papers here if i can ever find the time to sit down and
write.

woman here working on Algonquian family also finding same pattern. in
summary, the main points of comparison are:

1. always two forms
2. tied to modal paradigms
3. can be used independently as narrative tenses
4. yet overgeneralization that narrative tense with past only
5. complex interaction: conjunction, negation, mood, tense, syntax

interesting that the main hebrew consecutive morphologically and
syntactically modal, all things being equal. ;-)

cheers
V

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Dr Vincent DeCaen     <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>
c/o Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, 4 Bancroft Ave., 2d floor
University of Toronto, Toronto ON, CANADA, M5S 1A1

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative, www.chass.utoronto.ca/~decaen/hsei/
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The mind takes to a new idea the way the body takes to microbe:
It rejects it.  --P.D. Medawar