Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Bailey <jonathan.bailey AT gmx.de>]

---------- Original Message ----------

>*shudder* I hope I haven't actually said such a thing, and if I 
>seemed to it certainly wasn't my intention and I apologize at once.  
>I know that views of consecution have been developed after careful 
>study; I just don't happen to agree with them :-)  To Jonathan, I 
>should explain that my approach seeks unifying factors in 
>grammatical usage, some sort of "thread" that ties apparently 
>disparate uses of a form together.  There are innumerable 
>examples of wayyiqtols that can't be consecutive, so I ask what 
>the tie is that binds consecutive and non-consecutive uses 
>together.  I also work from a strict separation of syntax and 
>semantics a la Chomsky.  My view is a minority one, I am well 
>aware.  But from some chatter I've read here and there as well as 
>some private messages I've received now and again, a view other 
>than consecutivity seems to be gaining some steam.  Perhaps in 
>another hundred years or so...And again, if I have implicitly or 
>explicitly suggested that somebody here does any "blind following" 
>of a view, I apologize.  

I think the common thread that you are looking for is the fact that children 
learn their 
language by imitation, rather than reading grammar books, and therefore, our 
rules 
don't always apply. For instance, take the English phrase, "that's him". 
According to 
English grammar, the phrase should be "that's he" as "him" is an objective, 
accusative or prepositional case. But somehwere during the course of the 
language's 
history, people got used to seeing he precede the verb and him follow it. 
With Hebrew, 
the vayyiqtol became the standard method of relating narrative past, and so 
it 
assumed this function (in some instances) even when unbound to a previous 
past 
indicating verb.

Now what I would be interested in finding is a vayyiqtol that is talking 
about the 
FUTURE, particularly without being bound to a previous future describing 
verb. Can 
you give me a list of unconsecutive vayyiqtols that are NOT describing 
narrative past?



Jon