Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your posting. I haven't seen Bryan's book, and he has 
kept out of this thread. So it seems that my idea is not so far from 
what others are saying, despite Rolf trying to make it seem totally 
hare-brained. Perhaps you or Bryan can point me and Rolf in the 
direction of some more background to Bryan's "relative non-past" idea.

In fact Niccacci seems to say something similar: "We can affirm that 
verb forms have FIXED TEMPORAL REFERENCE when they are verbal 
sentences and/or indicate the mainline of communication both in 
narrative and in direct speech. On the other hand, they have a 
RELATIVE TEMPORAL REFERENCE when they are nominal clauses and indicate 
a subsidiary line of communication." (By "nominal clause" Niccacci 
seems to mean any clause which does not begin with a verb (or W- plus 
verb). So he would I think call B:+EREM + YIQTOL "nominal", though 
+EREM is hardly a noun.) (A. Niccacci, "On the Hebrew Verbal System", 
in Bergen (ed.) "Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics", 
Eisenbrauns 1994). But no further explanation is given in this brief 
article.

I know I'm not really addressing Rolf's question. That's one reason 
why I changed the subject line. I am rather putting a different 
interpretation of the basic facts (a much simpler one) from the one 
which is implied in his question. On my interpretation, his question 
(at least as far as it is based on Jeremiah 47:1) becomes meaningless.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
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Subject: Re[3]: Can Hebrew "tense" be relative to context not dei
Author:  <zellmer AT digitelone.com> at Internet
Date:    06/10/1999 07:34


Peter,

While I am not sure your current topic is really addressing Rolf's 
question, I don't think we have to go to all these examples from other 
languages to answer the question posed in your thread subject.  Rocine 
classifies qatals in dependent clauses as "relative  past background," 
relative to the event time (not the deictic time) of the verb. 
Similarly, he classifies yiqtols in dependent clauses as "relative 
non-past background," thus leaving open the question of present or 
future to be answered on a case-by-case basis.

HTH,

Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: <peter_kirk AT sil.org>
To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu> 
Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 1999 12:21 PM
Subject: Re[2]: Can Hebrew "tense" be relative to context not deictic
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