Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Peter,

Thank you for your comments. See my comments below:

RF
>Dear Rolf,
>
>Many thanks for your long and detailed post.
>
>I fear that by taking too many examples at once, and especially
>difficult (and possibly late) ones such as the psalm, we will confuse
>ourselves. I would like to sort out the simple points first, and then
>we can go on to the more complex ones. So I would like to look at the
>very first verse which you give, which is a good example for initial
>discussion.
>
>2Kings 17:6 "In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured
>(QATAL) Samaria; he carried (WAYYIQTOL) the Israelites away to
>Assyria. He placed (WAYYIQTOL) them in Halah, on the Habor, the river
>of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes."
>
>But first let me compare your examples:
>
>(1d) At sunrise Peter had arrived. ( RT/E>C>SP)
>(1e) Peter came at sunrise.( RT/E>C=SP)
>
>Let's change (1e) slightly, without I think changing its meaning, and
>so I will assume that your analysis is unchanged:
>
>(1f) At sunrise Peter arrived. (RT/E>C=SP)
>
>Now the analyses of (1d) and (1e) are different: in (1d) C is sunrise,
>but in (1f) (as in (1e)) C is speech time. Why the difference? Now
>actually I think that this is correct, for English. But how can we
>know, for a Hebrew sentence, whether it is comparable with (1d) or
>(1f)? Specifically, let's take
>
>2Kings 17:6 "In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured
>(QATAL) Samaria;..."
>
>How do we know whether the time phrase indicates a new C, as in (1f),
>or not, as in (1d)? You assume the latter. I had been thinking the
>former, but maybe I was misunderstanding the theory. But I still don't
>see how we can be sure of the difference. I wonder if the difference
>in Hebrew is linked to the presence of absence of "WAYHIY" before the
>time phrase - absent here?

RF
First of all, please change the preposition in (1d), in accordance with
what I wrote to Ian: "*By* sunrise Peter had arrived.".
Your question "How can we know whether there is a new C in a Hebrew text?"
is clearly pertinent if Hebrew does not have tenses. A new C in the
examples above relates to pluperfect, so we could ask: How do we pinpoint
the pluperfect in Hebrew? There is no particular form for it, so what we
can do is to look at the context and particularly look for anaphoric
elements,i.e. elements that show that the action of the verb in question
occurred before another action. In narrative with WAYYIQTOLs, a QATAL in
between these may be a signal for Pluperfect, but a WAYYIQTOL can also be
translated as Pluperfect. In Psalm 105:26 both the relative particle and
the context lead us to take BXR as a pluperfect.

Your important point stands: In English there are auxiliaries as "has" and
"have" which can help us determine the C, but these are lacking in Hebrew.
Therefore we need to be cautious.


PK

>
>Meanwhile, how would Galia have analysed (1d) and (1f)? She wrote, on
>27 December:
>
>     1. Mary ate a banana.
>     2. Mary will eat a banana.
>     3. Mary has eatn a banana.
>
>     ...So what is the difference between (1) and (3)? Reichenbach
>     claims that speakers take into account a third point of time, he
>     labels Reference-Time (henceforth: R-time, or just R). So, every
>     sentence (in English) is to be analyzed according to THREE times
>     (in Reichenbach...): S, E and R. According to him, the difference
>     between (1) and (3) is in the relationship of the three times. In
>     (1) E and R associate, both precede S, while in (3) S and R
>     associate, both follow E. The sentence in (4) clearly shows that
>     there are three times:
>
>     4. (when John arrived) Mary had already left.
>
>     As Reichenbach determines for the past-perfect sentence in (4),
>     the E-time of Mary's leaving precedes the S-time, but also the
>     R-time determined by the adverbial I put in brackets... The
>     simple-past in (1) builds an R-time, while the past-perfect in
>     (4) does not. I conclude that the past-perfect is NOT an
>     R-building form... That is why without the bracketed sentence,
>     (4) would be ungrammatical. A sentence like "Mary had eaten"
>     cannot be interpreted without providing an R-time.
>
>Galia's (1) seems to correspond to my (1f), and her (4) to your (1d).
>So I think she would analyse (please, Galia, correct me if I am
>wrong!) the verb form in (1f) as building a new R-time and that in
>(1d) as not doing so. Thus the time phrase "At sunrise" is required in
>(1d) to build the R-time for this sentence (unless the R-time is
>already given in the context), but is optional in (1f).
>
>So we can tabulate the sentences as follows:
>
>                                    Rolf              Galia
>(1d) At sunrise Peter had arrived.  C is sunrise      R is sunrise
>(1f) At sunrise Peter arrived.      C is speech time  R is event time
>
>So I conclude that my analysis of your (Rolf's) C as equivalent to
>Galia's R was not correct. There is nothing in your theory, as far as
>I can see, which corresponds to Galia's R. I think that that is
>unfortunate as I think I am finding Galia's analysis more useful.
>
>Galia's point about the optionality of the time phrase may help to
>decide on how to view the X+QATAL construction of 2 Kings 17:6. If the
>time phrase is optional, the sentence is more like (1f), and if it is
>compulsory, the sentence is more like (1d). Well, there certainly are
>X+QATAL constructions without time phrases, but very often they are
>flashbacks of the type which could be translated in English by a
>pluperfect without an explicit time phrase, such as "John left. Peter
>had arrived." On the other hand, I don't think we would want to
>translate 2 Kings 17:6 "In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of
>Assyria had captured Samaria..." So maybe we take this clause as
>similar to (1f), which is your analysis. On the other hand, Galia has
>said that QATAL does not build a new R-time, so I guess she would
>analyse this clause as more similar to (1d) - is that right, Galia?
>
>Now let's look at the continuation of the verse: "he carried
>(WAYYIQTOL)... He placed (WAYYIQTOL)..." I agree (from the pragmatics)
>that these must be sequential events in this case. So in that case
>they must have new RT's according to your theory, corresponding to the
>nuclei or codas of each event, but I think you are taking them as
>having the same C as the first clause of the verse. (Your rejection of
>my suggestion that WAYYIQTOL might be future logically rules out my
>earlier thought that you might take C as being the time of the
>previous event in the chain). The problem with that analysis is that
>it ignores the important matter of the temporal relationship between
>the successive clauses. Galia would also analyse these clauses as
>having new reference times (though in (1d) her reference time is not
>the same as your reference time), and her comments about
>sequentiality, although rather confusing to me, suggest that her
>theory is concerned with the temporal relationship between successive
>reference times.
>
>So I am now coming towards the conclusion that the theory behind your
>approach, although superficially similar to Galia's, is in fact very
>different from it and results in a quite different analysis of a very
>simple and typical narrative verse like this one. I must say that I
>find Galia's analysis more helpful and yours less so. Since your
>analysis is based on Broman Olsen, I am left wondering whether the
>problem is with her theory or with your application of it to Hebrew. I
>wonder, has Broman Olsen published an analysis of sentences like
>Galia's (1) and (4)? (I don't have her book available.) I am just
>wondering if in her theory C might actually work more like Galia's R,
>in a sentence like (1f) and also in the continuation WAYYIQTOLs
>discussed above. That, to my mind, would be a more useful theory, at
>least for the purposes of Hebrew.

RF

Let me bring a quote from Broman Olsen (p 121) taking in Galia's (1) and (2):

"Tense asserts that RT has a uniform relationship to a deictic center (C),
as in (2), repeated in (5). The English SIMPLE PAST tense in (5a) asserts
that yawning and being old held at a RT prior to C (RT>C), the SIMPLE
PRESENT  in (5b) that they are true at an RT concurrent with C (RT=C), and
the SIMPLE FUTURE in (5c) that they will subsequently be true (C>RT).

(5)     (a)Jeanette yawned/was old. (past)
        (b) Jeanette yawns/is old. (present)
        (c) Jeanette will yawn/be old. (future)

The truth of the statements in (5) depends upon the situations holding at
the relevant time. The relation between RT and C is part of the
truth-conditional or semantic meaning and is therefore not cancelable."

The following points taken from Broman Olsen (pp 140-142) may be relevant
for Galia's (3)

Reichenbach's view of present perfect is discribed thus (p 140): "ET>RT=C"
Her view of present perfect is expressed on two planes, as tense and as
aspect (p 142):
"Tense: RT=C, Grammatical aspect: /ET^RT/@coda (=ET intersects RT at the 
coda)"

While Reichenbach relates everything to time, Broman Olsen relates ET to
aspect.

The following points taken from Broman Olsen (pp 135,142) may be relevant
for Galia's (4)

Broman Olsen describes Reichenback`s past perfect as (p 135): "ET<RT<C"
Her own view of past perfect is (p 142): "Tense: RT<C, Grammatical aspect:
/ET^RT/@coda (=ET intersects RT at the coda)"

As a further help I bring the following quote from Broman Olsen (p 118):

"My analysis differs from Reichenbach and Comrie in three main respects: it
eliminates the problematic distinction between absolute and relative tense,
it allows tense to relate to a C other than SP (speech time), and it
assigns the relation betwqeen RT and ET to aspect."


PK
>
>I regret that I am unable to make sense of the rest of your posting
>while I am still confused about the theory on which you base it.
>

RF
You could at least explain according to your theory why the QATALs of Psalm
function exactly as WAYYIQTOLs in other accounts - they bring the account
forwards, and how this is possible. You could also comment on the use of
YIQTOLs.




Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo





























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