Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> > Let us first consider a method. How do you expect me to prove narrator's
> > deictic center? Psychoanalysis? No.
>
> OK, so you are putting forward a hypothesis which is, by your own 
> admission, unprovable - and for the same reason is unfalsifiable. As such 
> it can only be a speculation.

Of course, not. As I described, and what is a standard method of scientific 
proof, a hypothesis can be accepted if no contradicting facts can be brought 
against it, and if the hypothesis is simler than others.

> I think you need to suggest how it is even reasonable to consider that a 
> habitual action in the past is described from a deictic centre shifted 
> even further into the past, when there is no evidence at all for such a 
> deictic shift.
The discussed fact of using future tense to describe past events is just 
such evidence.
I assume, you don't dispute that deictic shifts exist.


> > To prove b), I invoke Russian and English examples, and show that such
> > shifts are not alien to human mentality.
>
> The English example, "would" for a past habit, certainly does not indicate 
> a deictic shift into the past.

I can settle for calling that idiomatic usage, and then we can discuss 
whether that idiomatic usage originally arose from deictic center shifts.

Vadim Cherny