Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Moon-Ryul Jung" <moon AT saint.soongsil.ac.kr>]

Niccatti wrote:

(I am glad to see "Niccatti" on the list again; What he writes always
stimulates me! Thanks)

>
In BH historical narrative, the 'deictic point' is the past and the 
'reference time' of wayyiqtol coincides with the 'deictic point.' In 
H. Weinrich's terms, this narrative wayyiqtol indicates the 'degree 
zero,' or the mainline of communication; conversely, qatal and yiqtol 
(actually [waw-] x-qatal and [waw-] x-yiqtol, i.e. second-place qatal 
and yiqtol) indicate an information or event that is anterior or 
posterior to the 'degree zero,' respectively.

Niccatti seems to define the "deictic point" differently than Peter and 
others do. For many, the deitic point is the speech time (ST), the 
time point in history at. But Niccatti seems to think that the deitic point 
is the reference time zero (RT0).
Once we are in a given narrarive, we need other reference times RT1, RT2, 
etc., relative to which situations are described. We may use nested 
reference times: RT1 is relative to RT0, and RT2 is relative
RT1, etc. I think that this understanding of reference time is 
reasonable by analogy to the way we describe locations. When 
describe some place to other people, we use a lot of reference locations. 
So is when we explain  situations to others.

Anyway, Niccatti seems to think that we do not need the notion of the 
speech time. The speaker directly goes to the reference time zer0 (RT0),
wherever it is, when they want to describe situations. So, why bother with 
the speech time, which seems quite redundant?
But I am not sure if I understood Niccatti correctly.

Moon
Moon R. Jung
Associate Professor
Dept of Computer Science
Soongsil University
Seoul, Korea