Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

I suggest a look at the archives, because this topic has come up many, many 
times in the last couple of years.  Briefly, we have tentatively concluded 
that 1) the tense view doesn't work, 2) the aspect view doesn't work, 3) the 
"consecutive" may or may not be consecutive, and if it is there are beaucoup 
exceptions, and 4) we really don't know what it is.  I offered a different 
theory back in 1994 in the journal Hebrew Studies that some have adopted, and 
Galia Hatav offered another one in her book.  Rolf questions whether there 
really is such a thing, and most of us are waiting for further information 
while fumbling along as best we can with the material we have available.  But 
to answer your question, I don't actually know of anybody on this list who 
would fully agree with the analysis below.

On Wednesday 27 April 2005 10:41, Evgeny Ivanov wrote:
> Dear friends,
>
> I was thinking recently about the mystery of vav-consequtive. My
> understandning is that the first imperfect verb brings the reference point
> in time to the event of that first action, and then all consequtive verbs
> would be in the future as seen from that reference point in time. This is a
> different sense of time compared to modern languages.
>
> Traditionally the imperfect verbs in vav-consequtive form are translated as
> perfect. However, if the above understanding of vav-consequtive is correct,
> the actual  time of their action with respect to the present moment is
> unknow. It is unknown whether the action has been finished by now, or it is
> still going to be finished. The only thing known for sure is that the
> action was not finished at the moment of the first action in the
> vav-consequtive sentence. So the form of the verbs (and time of actions) in
> vav-consequtive form would rather be determined by exegesis and context.
>
> For example, in Genesis 2.1-2.3 the actions are translated in perfect form:
> "And the heaven and earth were finished". However, literal translation
> would rather be that they are not finished at the time when the action of
> the first verb in the vav-chain happened (which is probably Gen1.1), but
> it's unknown whether they are finished by the present moment or not.
>
> Would you agree with this understandidng of vav-consequtive phenomenon?
>
>
> Shalom,
> Evgeny
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
Reality is what refuses to go away when
you stop believing in it.