Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 17/09/2004 09:01, Rolf Furuli wrote:

> Dear Peter,
>
> I understand that your position is caused by your inductive approach 
> to Hebrew verbs.  My different conclusion is caused by the approach of 
> distinguishing between semantic meaning and conversational pragmatic 
> implicature.  Less than one percent of all Hebrew verbs can be used to 
> identify semantic meaning.  In my view a quality approach (semantics) 
> is much better than a quantity approach (pragmatics).
OK. But if you develop a model based on your 1% of verbs which is then 
contradicted by a large part of the 99%, surely there is something wrong 
with the model. I would accept that in 1% of WAYYIQTOLs the internal 
structure may be visible. But in 99%, or at least 90%, there is no 
indication of any kind of interest in the internal structure. But 
according to your model the aspect is semantic and so uncancellable. So 
you end up with the reductio ad absurdum that in a narrative passage 
with WAYYIQTOLs like Jonah 1:3 (chosen largely at random) there is 
forced to be an interest in the internal structure of no less than five 
successive events, some of which are more or less punctiliar; whereas 
you are left with no way which is actually used for the author to 
narrate a series of actions whose internal structure is not made visible.

How do you deal with WAYYIQTOL forms of verbs which are strictly 
punctiliar, like the rather common WAYYAMOT "and he died"? How can these 
be imperfective?

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