Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Sunday 12 October 2003 17:45, Trevor Peterson wrote:
> I wrote:
> > > But on the macrosyntactic level, a
> >
> > vayyiqtol form,
> >
> > > by virtue of its being the default, cannot signal the start of a
> > > narrative block. Consider the following example in English:
>
> Dave replied:
> > But isn't this essentially saying the same thing as the first
> > prof?  If I
> > understand correctly, both you and s/he are saying that the
> > wayyiqtol MUST be
> > a "continuation" form and can't begin a "narrative block."
>
> No, look again at what I wrote. I did not say it cannot begin a
> narrative block. I said it cannot *signal* the beginning of such a
> block. My point is that if it is the default form (the standard form
> used in simple past narrative), it cannot explicitly mark the beginning
> of a segment. I went out of my way to observe that in both English and
> Hebrew we can use such default forms at the beginning of a narrative,
> but when we do so, it is usually to accomplish something other than
> merely signaling the beginning of a new narrative.

OK, thanks for the clarification.

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"God does a lot of things in the Psalms
that He can't get away with in systematic theology."