Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 24/03/2004 07:01, Sameer Yadav wrote:

> ...
>
> If the modal uses of qtl count as strong enough
> evidence to reject the modal version of the
> waw-conversive theory, then all the modal uses of wqtl
> where the waw is being used as a simple coordinating
> conjunction count as straightforward modal uses of
> qtl, which completely undermines both Hatav and Zuber. ...
>  

I haven't looked into your argument in detail. But it seems to me that 
you are presenting a rather small number of examples as evidence to 
reject and "completely undermine" certain theories. At this point I 
reject your methodology, for the same reason that I reject Rolf 
Furuli's. I would expect that in natural language (and especially in 
ancient texts which may be corrupt) there will always be a small number 
of cases which do not fit neatly into any theory. Sometimes a 
refinement, rather than rejection, of the theory may be necessary; but 
even so, with an ancient language with no mother tongue speakers 
available, we must expect that there will be a small number of 
occurrences which we can never explain properly.

If you can find a better theory which accounts for 100% of the data, or 
even 99.5%, please let us know, but until then be careful about 
rejecting theories which account for 99% of it.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/