Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Peter,


It is fine that you work hard to grasp the fundamentals of the model. See
my comments below,


PK
>Dear Rolf,
>
>I wonder if I am confusing myself, and no doubt anyone else who is
>reading, by making examples too complex on this issue. I certainly
>don't want to get into complex matters like the Psalms until I have
>understood simple narrative according to your theory. So let's look at
>something very simple:

RF
To make it easier we could drop the whole "letter-soup" as Ian would have
said and just use common sense (the ET,RT and C are used in order to tie
our common sense to a scientific system). Regarding Psalm 105 we can just
ask: Do the QATALs move the account forward, describing one event after the
other, just as does WAYYIQTOL in the historical books? And I think that any
person on the list by using his or her commen sense will answer "yes". So
common sense continues and asks: If a QATAL can do the same as a WAYYIQTOL,
how can anyone claim that the WAYY-element has a semantic meaning apart
from its force as a conjunction?

The following is not ad hominem in any sense, I think it is more the system
of Hebrew scholarship that is to blame than particular persons (including
yourself). But the reluctance to discuss parts of Biblical Hebrew which are
not narrative accounts reminds med of Galia's comments regarding the
Relative-Tense-Theory from the 18th and 19th century: "This line of
analysis provides acircular explanation, since it allows the writer to
change his point-of-view at will, from one verse to another." The reason
for changing C (the deictic point) at will, was to let the text fit their
theory.

The parallel that comes to my mind, is that one starts with narrative
(which can be methodologically sound), but when one looks at other texts,
it is aparent that one's theory does not fit. The system then offers two
tools for our rescue:
(1) "That your theory does not fit is no problem, because there *can* be
something strange with these non-narrative texts; nobody has so far found
these strange uses of verbs, but just leave the texts alone."
(My comment: Which other language, dead or alive, is studied from the point
of view that the *semantic meaning* of verbs is different in prose than in
poetry?)
(2) "That your theory does not fit is no problem, because there *can* be
another verbal system in these texts, because language change over time.")
(My comment: This tool *may* have some substance. However, hitherto nobody
has been able to *demonstrate* a difference in verbal meaning /see my post
yesterday/, it is hardly natural to refuse to work with this material until
someone has demonstrated a difference in verbal meaning. A critical mind
could, on this background, start to think: "Perhaps it is the theory that
is wrong because it does not fit the whole corpus of Classical Hebrew?)


PK
>(1) This morning I got up.
>(2) After I got up I washed myself.
>(3) After I washed myself I got dressed.
>
>How would you analyse these sentences? (And Galia, how would you
>analyse them?) The following is how I would expect you, Rolf, to
>analyse them, am I right?
>
>(1) C is speech time, RT is "this morning", ET is "I got up".
>(2) C is speech time, RT is "I got up", ET is "I washed myself"
>(3) C is speech time, RT is "I washed myself", ET is "I got dressed"
>
>But on this analysis, in (2) and (3) RT is BEFORE ET and does not seem
>to intersect with it at all. So how would this fit into Broman Olsen's
>theory?

>Or perhaps in (2) RT is the unspecified time after "I got up" when I
>washed myself (or completed doing so), i.e. the same as ET - and
>similarly in (3). Which do you think is correct? On this latter
>analysis, as RT in (2) and (3) is only specified as after a particular
>time, we can say nothing about its relationship with ET. So we cannot
>determine whether the verbs are "perfective" or "imperfective"
>according to Broman Olsen's definition.

RF
Your reasoning is logical and you seem to have grasped the basics of Broman
Olsen's system. I will add one new information that you need: Some forms
are aspectually unmarked! This is so because the perfective aspect is
expressed by perfect and not by the preterit. This is my analysis:

(1) C is speech time, RT is "this morning", ET is "I got up".
(2) C is speech time, RT is "After I got up", ET is "I washed myself"
(3) C is speech time, RT is "after I washed myself", ET is "I got dressed"


>
>But I guess that Broman Olsen would say that in (1) RT intersects ET
>at the nucleus, and so the verb is "imperfective". Well, actually RT
>not only "intersects" ET but engulfs it - as if one would ask where a
>road intersects with a pencil lying in it in a crosswise direction. Or
>is RT an unspecified point of time during this morning? Note that in
>Russian the verbs in all three sentences would have to be perfective.
>I am very suspicious of definitions of "perfective" and "imperfective"
>which contradict Russian usage as (if I understand it correctly) these
>terms are borrowed from Russian grammar; if Broman Olsen means
>something significantly different from the meaning in Russian (even in
>a simple case like this one), she would have done better to use
>different terminology.

RF
Russian perfective and imperfective come closer to  Aktionsart than to
aspects (in the English sense) and is even farther from Hebrew aspect, as
was also pointed out by one list-member from Russia two years ago. In
Russian we can even have a "neutral" interpretation of the imperfective
aspect, as in (4)

(4) Vojnu i mir pisal Lev Tolstoj (Lev Tolstoj wrote "War and Peace".)

The verb in (4) is imperfective and the normal interpretation according to
pragmatic convention is not that Tolstoj did not complete the work (that it
was in progress), but the focus is on the fact that the event took place. A
perfective verb would focus on the completion of the event. As to Hebrew,
this use of the imperfective aspect can illustrate that the idea that
WAYYIQTOL is imperfective, and still is used in narrative, can have
similarities with imperefective use in other languages.

RF
>Either of my analyses above ties in with Galia's idea of building a
>new reference time, if I am now right in trying to identify the
>concepts of reference time in the two theories (as apparently Broman
>Olsen herself wanted to). But is Galia's new reference time in (2) the
>time when I got up, or the time after that when I washed myself?

Letter soup away, common sense tells that (2) and (3) erxpress two events
in succession.


PK
>Now let's replace (1-3) by:
>
>(1)  This morning I got up.
>(2a) Then I washed myself.
>(3a) Then I got dressed.
>
>Same analysis? I assume so. Then let's translate into BH. We could
>come up with something like:
>
>(4) hayyom babboqer qamti wa'erxac wa'elba$ 'et-bigdi
>
>Would you agree? My point is that the structure is the same as 2 Kings
>17:6 and countless other verses in the HB. Now we cannot assume that
>the analysis of this Hebrew is the same as the analysis of the English
>from which I have translated it, but in this case I can see no good
>reason for a different analysis - though I could argue for "hayyom
>babboqer" being C for these sentences. Can you see any reason for a
>different analysis?

RF
To use a little soup again:  (1) RT/E>C, (2a) RT/E>C, (3a) RT/E>C. We have
a sequence of simple unmarked events, each with a new RT. Common sense
tells us the same. This is what we find in 2 Kings 17:6. However, if we
proceed to vv 7 and 8, we find the two WAYYIQTOLs YR) and HLK, and this is
not necessarily the same situation. If we claim that a *semantic* property
of WAYYIQTOL is that it (allways) builds a new RT, then the people first
feared other gods and then, after the fearing was over, they walked
according to the custom of the nations. But this is against common sense
and our knowledge of the world. Each event represents one side of the same
situation, nemaely the one that is expressed by  the QATAL X+) in v 7. We
have scores of similar examples.

Take for instance Deut 1:14,41. Did the people first answer and then say?.
And in 1:34. Did YHWH first become angry and after his anger ceased, he
swore? And in 1:43, did they first rebel, then act proudly, and then they
went up? It is my impression that most examples of WAYYIQTOL are
consecutive, each building a new RT, but hundreds of examples are either
coordinated with each other, as above, or are subordinated.

PK
>I would like to be able to sort out this simple case before going on
>to anything more complicated.


Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
























>