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b-hebrew - Re[3]: Ariyel's Flower,hinne-qatal

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  • From: "Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>
  • To: <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>
  • Cc: <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re[3]: Ariyel's Flower,hinne-qatal
  • Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 23:09:00 -0500


Dear Randall,

Thank you for your off-list help with this. But I still beg to differ
from you. I feel that you have not taken proper account of the
different temporal semantics of HINNE and QATAL versus WAYYIQTOL. I
have become quite familiar with this through my discussions with Rolf
Furuli, though I have not come to agreement with him on this.

It seems to me that whereas WAYYIQTOL establishes a new R-time which
(usually) follows the previous event, the effect of HINNE (as well as
one of immediacy) is the opposite, to fix the R-time as one which is
already known. Very often this R-time is the time of a previous event.
This is especially clear in the common idiom "he saw, and HINNE...":
the reference time for the HINNE is the time of seeing, at which point
the event described can be present, hence a participle, or past, using
QATAL. Judges 6:28 works like this, although the verb of seeing is
omitted. (I can hardly say it is implied, as it cannot be implied in
the parallel idiom in 2 Kings 19:35!) This type of fixing of the
R-time is doubly signalled in a case like Gen 38:29 with the WAYHIY
KE- meaning "and at the same time that...", stressing simultaneity.

Then we have 2 Samuel 14:6-7. Here the HINNE works slightly
differently in that it fixes the R-time as the speech time (which is
also common with HINNE, surely) and signals the start of the main
story following the introduction in verses 5b-6. The event of verse 7
is of course sequential to those of verse 6, but the point is rather
that this describes the present situation. That is why NIV and NRSV
both translate with "now" and a present perfect: "Now the whole
family/clan has risen ..." This is in accord with the regular meaning
of X QATAL, as are all the examples you quote which have a QATAL. I
think that a translation "Then the whole family/clan rose..." would be
quite wrong.

So I would still take

vehinne dibbera ha-tsitsa
vehinne dibber ha-peraH

in the story as meaning something different from what was intended
(and in fact nonsensical in the context), something like "and (at the
time when she bent down) the flower had said..."

Peter Kirk




  • Re[3]: Ariyel's Flower,hinne-qatal, Peter Kirk, 01/27/2000

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