Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Peter,

I have read your arguments carefully. Before (B+RM) you wrote this message
I did not understand what your arguments were all about. Now I think I
understand what your arguments are, but I must admit that I have never
heard anything like them, and I think they they are based upon a faulty
foundation.

If I understand you correctly, I would say that inherrent in your arguments
are two basic problems:
(1) A confusion of the deictic point  and the sequence of events.
(2) An application of characteristics of indirect speech in situations
where these are impossible to use.

Your principal problem is a confusion of the deictic point in the
expression in Jer 47:1.  The sentence above (in this post) starting with
"Before (B+RM)" and ending with "all about" that consists of a subordinate
and a main clause may illustrate the problem. What is the deictic point of
this sentence? It is of course the time I write my post. The clause "before
you wrote this message" is telic, and this event was terminated before C
(my writing of the post). The same is true of the event "I did not
understand". It is true that "I did not understand" is prepast compared
with "before you wrote this message", but you cannot on that basis
establish a "deictic point" connected with "I did not understand" and on
this basis argue that "before you wrote this post" is future. I have never
seen such arguments in the linguistic literature, and would like to ask if
you can refer to any source. It is true that C is pragmatic and must be
fixed by help of the context. But in most cases does C represent speech
time (or the time of writing), and where this is not the case, there must
be clear indicators that it deviates from the normal.

Your English example below," "Here he is. I said that he would come." can
be compared with  Gen 27:33 (RSV) " I ate it just before (B+RM)  you came
and I blessed him - and indeed he will be blessed!"  Do you deny that the
deictic point here is speech time, that is, Isaac's utterance? I find the
following relationships between R and C in this verse.

(1) "I ate (WAYYIQTOL) "  R>C
(2) "I blessed him (WAYYIQTOL)"  R>C /(2) occurred after (1)/
(3) "you came (YIQTOL)"  R>C /(1) and (2) occurred before (3)/
(4) "he will be blessed (YIQTOL and passive participle) C>R /(4) holds
after (3)/

In (1), (2), and (3) reference time precedes the deictic point, but in (4)
refence time comes after the deictic point.  I am not aware of any
linguistic model or system that tries to establish deictic points between
the different clauses in a passage. To say that the thought of this passage
is "I ate it just before (B+RM)  you would come (or, will come)", is in my
eyes completely impossible. Is this a way of handling passages that SIL
translators learn, or is it simply a theory of yours?

And what about the other examples that I mentioned in my first post?

Is. 57:17 Because of the iniquity of his covetousness I was angry (QATAL),
I smote him WEYIQTOL), I hid (QATAL) my face and was angry (WEYIQTOL);" Is
the first WEYIQTOL (as well as the second) future? The compilators of BHS
saw a problem here and without any manuscript evidence suggested an
emendation.

What about the YIQTOLs of NKH in 2 Kings 8:29; 9:15; 15:16, are they also
future?



Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


>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>
>
>
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