Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Peter Kirk  wrote



>Dear Rolf,
>
>I feel bad about answering this without reading it all. But you seem
>to have ignored the fact that +EREM and B:+EREM are regularly followed
>by YIQTOL. See GKC 107c, 152r. I guess this is because the idea of
>"before" carries futurity and/or modality. That is to say, the event
>time of the subordinate clause is after the event time of the main
>clause. I have a feeling that in Hebrew the time of a subordinate
>clause is regularly judged in relation to that of the main clause
>rather than directly related to the overall deictic point. Thus in the
>same way QATAL is regularly used in subordinate clauses introduced
>with KIY even where the main clause is future and/or modal. Have I got
>that right? If so, I really think we don't need to go into any of your
>other theories to explain Jer 47:1.


Dear Peter,


Your points above are not an explanation of the problem I posed, namely,
how telic YIQTOLs could be used for events that ware completed  ( provided
that we either view YIQTOL as an imperfective aspect or  a non-past tense).
Given one of these definitions, it should not be possible to use a YIQTOL
in the mentioned situations.

I am aware of what GCK and other grammars say about +EREM and B+ERM, and my
first post included an implicit criticism of these comments. We should
check out the information ourselves and not rely on information that has
been repeated from one grammar to the next, from the last century or even
from the Middle Ages, and which never has been thorougly checked.

GKC 107 c says: "The imperfect is FREQUENTLY (my bold script) used in this
way /to express actions that continued throughout a longer or shorter
period/ after the particles )Z then, +RM  not yet, B+RM  before." At most,
this is an observation that explains absolutely nothing as to WHY a YIQTOL
is used in these cases.  And further,  the observation itself is
questionable.  A search revealed only 18 examples of )Z followed by a
YIQTOL  with past meaning,14 examples of B+RM  and 7 examples of +RM
followed by YIQTOLs with past meaning. I have a list of more than 500
examples of YIQTOL with past meaning, and I expect this number to be more
than doubled when I finish my corpus. This means that less than 4 percent
of the YIQTOLs with past meaning occur after these particles.

Let me add that I found 4 examples of YIQTOL after +RM  and B+RM with
present meaning and 17 examples with future meaning. I also found 4 QATALs
with past meaning after the two particles . Regarding )Z  I found 45
YIQTOLs with future meaning after it, 34 QATALs with past meaning and 3
QATALs with future meaning. So the particles are used both with YIQTOLs and
QATALs with past and future meaning.  We can therefore draw no conclusion
as to why a     YIQTOL  is used in Jer 47:1 by the mere presence of B+RM.

You have in several posts referred to "my theories" as if my questions
regarding "strange forms" in the Bible were rooted in theories. My
questions regarding Jer 47:1 are not based on any theories of mine, but
they relate to how the data in this verse and a few similar verses can be
harmonized with the traditional grammatical viewpoints of tense and aspect.
When nobody seemed to have an answer to these questions, at least they did
not deem it fit to send an answer, I made some comments myself. So, if you
want to continue with the thread, please address my questions.



Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo