Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

Dear Rolf,

If you want an answer to your questions, I will try to give you some 
tentative ones according to my understanding, to clarify the points I 
made in my previous postings. I think I may have come upon something 
rather fundamental which you have missed, the principle behind the 
choice of verb forms in clauses off the main time line - so please 
read on carefully to my last paragraph below.


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[3]: Telic YIQTOLs WITH past meaning
Author:  <furuli AT online.no> at Internet
Date:    02/10/1999 09:25


Dear Peter.

I still see no answer to my principal questions, so I have to repeat them,

In Jer 47:3...

PK: I assume you mean 47:1 as in previous postings.

..(and the other mentioned places) we have a telic event where the 
predicate is a YIQTOL. A common denominator for almost all definitions of 
aspect is that the imperfective aspect is a viewpoint that does not include 
the end of an event.  Is the end of NCH included in the YIQTOL in this 
verse?...

PK: At the time of the main clause, i.e. when the word of YHWH came to 
Jeremiah, Pharaoh's attack on Gaza was still future and therefore 
incomplete.

..In that case, how can it be imperfective? And similarly with the 
tense-view. The end is always included in a  telic event expressed by a 
finite verb in past tense. If YIQTOL is a non-past tense where the end is 
not included, how can it be used in this situation when the end objectively 
was terminated?

PK: Because that termination had not yet happened at the reference 
point of the narrative here. Compare English: "Here he is. I said that 
he would come." Here the English "would" relates to an event which is 
objectively terminated (he has now come) but was future at the time of 
the main clause "I said". In many languages (including NT Greek) the 
indirect speech "he would come" is rendered by a straight future 
tense, apparently this is the case also in Hebrew. Jer 47:1 is not 
direct speech but the time relationships are analogous, so it is not 
surprising that the verb forms used are analogous.

An explanation like: "This is because it is preceded by B+RM." is a 
non-explanation, because you have not answered the questions "how" and 
"why". The usual explanation for YIQTOLs with past meaning is that they are 
durative...

PK: This is not my explanation, in this instance. I do not consider 
this YIQTOL to have past meaning, but rather future "meaning" in the 
sense that I have defined (though I would rather say that it occurs in 
a future context as the YIQTOL does not necessarily in itself have the 
semantic element of future).

..However, durativity is a semantic characteristic connected with the 
Aktionsart of the verb, and a QATAL or an infinitive of a verb that is 
semantically durative is just as durative as a YIQTOL (an explanation that 
the durativity lasts for some time does not help much) And such 
explanations  completely impossible with telic events. The only way I am 
able to explain NCH in Jer 47:1 is that *a part* of the action is focussed 
upon, and that *the end is ignored*, just as if an infinitive was used. 
This means that whether the end of an action in the past was reached or not 
is not signalled by QATAL  or YIQTOL (Although there are certain 
preferences), but it is signalled by the context.

Please show *why* this conclusion is wrong, if that is your opinion, and 
show *why* we can uphold an aspectual or a tense-view of the verbs and at 
the same time use YIQTOLs to describe telic events in the past.

PK: I think I have already shown this one in a simplistic way. 
Unfortunately I do not know the theoretical model which you use well 
enough to express my point definitively in its terminology.

PK: To generalise the basic point I am making, it seems that in such 
clauses, subordinate or simply off-line (as generally shown by not 
being verb initial), the verb form reflects the temporal relationship 
between that clause and the events of the main time line, and not the 
temporal relationship between that clause and the objective deictic 
point of view of the writer.


Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo

Peter Kirk

<snip>