Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

(washburn)
> The most foundational features I would suggest for 
>qatal are [+dependent +realis].  

I would not go along with dependency for qatal, 
unless you add dependency for vayyiqtol and veqatal (notice they are
prefixed with vav) which i wouldn't recommend. 
qatal is very nice independently, including clauses without vav.

i only have a little problem with +realis, because of performatives and
negative contra-factuals, but those can be special applications. 
so i accept + realis
though have used 
   "+definite" 
in my own publications.

the reverse problem occurs with yiqtol. 
would you want to say that the past-imperfective use of yiqtol is 'minus
realis'? "he used to do", "they were [not] ashamed"gen 2.25 (the negative
is used with both qatal and yiqtol so is irrelevant to argument). again,
one can define those as special applications. but "indefinite" or "minus
definite" more clearly forces a broad, prototypical definition from the
beginning.

randall buth