Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> > I wote several times that I imagine only two possible ways to prove 
> > deictic shift: psychoanalysis of a writer and analyzing the context. 
> > Deictic shifts I mentioned are contextually plausible. ...
>
> In some cases, maybe, in other cases, no. Anyway, you need to do better 
> than to say that the deictic shift is plausible, you need to demonstrate 
> that it has actually occurred.

How, Peter, how? It is a matter of interpreting context, more or less 
plausibly. By that logic, you should ask every translator to prove that the 
writer meant a partuclar sense. Ask Rolf to prove that Isaiah meant "in his 
death" rather than "high places" or "altars." Interpretation could be 
plausible or no. Deictic shifts could be plausible or no. They cannot be 
absolutely proven. Nor, for that matter, anything could be absolutely proven 
in natural sciences. Poincare advanced an extreme version of that idea, 
called conventionalism, that all knowledge is a matter of accepted 
conventions. Back to reasonable, is it proved that the earth is round? No, 
it is shown as plausible. Perhaps all the measurement scarried are wrong, 
and astronauts lie. Is it proved that speed of light is the limit? No, it is 
only shown is philosophically plausible, and entanglement challenges that 
notion. Nothing could be proved, except in mathematics, and even there only 
in a given system of axioms.
Put it another way, what is the proof of the aspect hypothesis?

> We agree that a hypothesis must be falsifiable to be properly scientific. 
> What we disagree on is whether this particular hypothesis is falsifiable.

The tense hypothesis is easily falsifiable. If I cannot show, for the 
counterexamples given, that either future tense or its derivatives (idioms, 
deictic shifts) fit the context - and do so plausibly for detached 
observers - then the hypothesis fails. Sure enough, we have an issue of a 
detached reasonable observer. So far, I see your comments on the context as 
reasonable.

You seem to accept that yiqtols, where not straight future or plausible 
deictic shift, could be approximated with "would." The main part of our 
quarrel is whether "would" is future tense. But I don't argue that either 
"would" or the corresponding yiqtols in Hebrew are future tense. I say, they 
etymologically derive from future tense. (Thus, when speaker describes a 
habitual action, he is transposed into its midst, and seeing the action as 
continuing into the future, he uses future tense; I suggest, this was the 
original idea behind using "would" instead of any other word to describe 
habitual action.) Thus, my point is that originally all yiqtols were future 
tense; later, they diversified. In some cases, yiqtols do not refer to the 
future. Such cases, however, are rare, explicit from the context, and do not 
warrant disregarding tenses in overwhelming majority of verbs. To put it 
another way, Hebrew do not explicitly differentiate between "will" and 
"would." But that does not mean that yiqtol means aspects instead of 
will/would.

Vadim Cherny