Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

Dear Rolf,

Thank you for your reply. Please see some further comments of mine 
below.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[4]: <wayyiqtol> again
Author:  <furuli AT online.no> at Internet
Date:    03/01/2000 08:58


Dear Peter,

Thank you for your comments. See my comments below:

<snip>

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?...

PK: I assume that here you mean "pluperfect" not as a verb form but as 
a verb function, or however you might term this. But sorry, Rolf, you 
are bringing in two further assumptions here, first that Hebrew verb 
functions can be correctly described by terms taken from Latin 
grammar, and the second that all verb functions with a new C are 
pluperfect. The latter is not true in English: if there is a new C in 
"By sunrise Peter had arrived", surely there is also one in "At 
sunrise Peter was about to arrive". In English "During the last hour 
before sunrise Peter arrived" may not give a new C, but there could 
well be a verb form in Hebrew which would give a new C in this type of 
sentence. Indeed, on further reflection on your definitions here, I 
would suggest that the first part of 2Kings 17:6 "In the ninth year of 
Hoshea the king of Assyria captured (QATAL) Samaria;..." is exactly 
this: a new C is set up which is a time period ("the ninth year of 
Hoshea") and all of the events of this verse are related to this time 
period. This, by the way, would make both the QATAL and the WAYYIQTOLs 
in this verse present by your definition.

RF: ...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.

PK: Yes, indeed I would take the majority of QATALs in subordinate 
clauses within narrative as pluperfect. For such clauses, C is the 
time of the main clause. This is also often the case for QATALs in 
narrative among WAYYIQTOLs. I think that Galia's analysis is very 
helpful here: the WAYYIQTOLs build a new reference time (though not, I 
now think, a new C) but the QATALs relate to the RT already built by a 
preceding time phrase or WAYYIQTOL.

PK: Thus I would analyse the very common structure for a narrative 
segment: B-<time phrase> <QATAL clause> <WAYYIQTOL clause> <WAYYIQTOL 
clause>... as follows. The B-<time phrase> defines a C, perhaps a 
period rather than a point in time, for the following events. The 
initial <QATAL clause> indicates a simple event which took place 
during that period. The following <WAYYIQTOL clause>'s are subseqent 
events with new reference times, in Galia's terminology (though I 
realise that I am trying to mix two incompatible theories here!). Thus 
I might over-literally translate 2Kings 17:6: "In the ninth year of 
Hoshea the following happened: the king of Assyria captured (QATAL) 
Samaria; then he carried (WAYYIQTOL) the Israelites away to Assyria; 
then he placed (WAYYIQTOL) them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of 
Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes." The added "the following 
happened" indicates that the time is the reference point for the whole 
verse, and potentially (though not actually in this case) for a much 
longer narrative; the added "then"'s indicate Galia's new reference 
times.

RF: 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.

<snip>

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.

PK: This does seem to be a step forward by Broman Olsen, but actually 
I wonder if the difference is mainly one of terminology. The problem 
is that (as Broman Olsen has realised, I am not sure if Reichenbach 
did) ET may be a period and not a point in time. I assume that 
"/ET^RT/@coda" is equivalent to "RT is at or after the end of ET" (it 
CANNOT mean "RT is exactly at the end of ET", because "Peter has 
arrived" may mean that his arrival was completed, which is the end of 
ET, some time before the present which is RT=C). Apparently 
Reichenbach's "ET>RT" means "RT is after ET" (though to me, with a 
scientific background, greater time is always later!). Whereas 
Reichenbach's "ET=RT" must mean, if ET is a period, that RT was some 
time between the beginning and end of ET, which is surely the meaning 
of "ET intersects RT at the nucleus". So what is the difference? Is 
not aspect related to time? Of course the situation becomes more 
complicated if RT or C is allowed to be a period rather than a point 
in time - which may apply in Hebrew even if not in English.

RF: 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: It is nice to eliminate problematic distinctions when they are not 
really there. But sometimes they are there at a fundamental level and 
have to be described rather than eliminated! But many thanks for your 
description of Broman Olsen's theory.

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.

PK: Are you referring again to Psalm 105, or to the psalms in general? 
One possible explanation is that Psalm 105 is written in a rather 
different dialect, either "late Biblical Hebrew" or some special 
poetic form of the language. I know that these later psalms are 
generally understood, even by relatively conservative scholars, to be 
post-exilic. As various people have recently pointed out, Hebrew verb 
forms started to be used somewhat differently in the "post-exilic" 
prose books from their usages in earlier books. One might well expect 
to note this change of usage in the Psalms also. In the analysis I 
presented some months ago of the narrative sections of Psalm 78, I 
noted that WAYYIQTOL was used mostly in the same way as in 
"pre-exilic" prose narrative (I accept that there is no good separate 
argument for dating this earlier than Psalm 105). So, just as Galia 
has wisely refused to be drawn into discussion of poetry, I am going 
to refuse to comment further on material which may well be "late 
Biblical Hebrew".


Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo

Peter Kirk