Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Galia Hatav <ghatav AT aall.ufl.edu>]

Dear Rodney K. Duke,

You wrote:
>
>Is it possible that yiqtol is modal (ala Hatav) and that we have two
>conjunctions:
>Waw + yiqtol -> weyiqtol and remains modal
>Waw + “definite marker” (perhaps ha) + yiqtol -> wayyiqtol and now
>becomes non-modal and is used in past narration?
>

Last Spring I suggested that <wayyiqtol> is composed of three elements:
<w>, <ay> and <yiqtol>. The form of <yiqtol> I analyzed in my book as modal
in the sense of modal logic, i.e., a clause with a verb in this form
quantifies over possible worlds.  The morpheme <ay>, I suggested last
spring, functions to anchor the situation to the Actual World. It does the
same job as a definite article does for noun phrases. Here is the example I
gave:

        1. a. Students work hard.
           b. The students work hard.

In (1a) the NP "students" refers to ANY person who happens to be a student
(including those people who were students in the past or will be in the
future). In other words, there is a universal quantifier ranging over all
the members of the set. In (1b) the article THE picks a group of
individuals.
The question is, whether the definite article for NPs is only an analogy to
the <ay> in <wayyiqtol>, or as you (and other people) suggested, that
actually the <ay> is a derivation of the definite article.

Galia


>
>--
>Rodney K. Duke
>Dept. of Phil. & Rel., Appalachian State Univ., Boone, NC 28608
>(O) 828-262-3091, (FAX) 828-262-6619, dukerk AT appstate.edu
>
>
>
>---
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