Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> Vadim, only yesterday you wrote:
>
> > Just a single example of clear usage of yiqtol as past tense or imperfect
> > would suffice for me to retract. But something clear, like "yesterday he
> > yiqtol."
>
> You asked for a single example, but I gave you two, which you have
> apparently accepted as "where yiqtol cannot be read as future". Now you
> want more examples? Instead you should keep your promise and retract.
Didn't you write, "I accept that these examples can be translated into
English with
"would", and into Russian with a 'historic perfective future' tense"?
And then, I explained why the odd "future perfect" is just future tense with
deictic shift, not a separate mood or tense. Those who don't accept future
with deictic shifts and idioms, wind up inventing a separate mood for every
turn and every idiom. And then, they claim that those moods are "not
exactly" future, that they are something hypothetical else. Of course, there
are some shades of meaning. But when you say in English, "You will do it,"
imperative turn, you don't dispute general use of "will" as future tense.
Likewise, yiqtol is future, sometimes used for idioms, etc specifically
derived from future tense.

Perhaps we are talking about more or less the same thing.
I don't assert that all yiqtols are "future reference from the point of view
of narrator's contemporaries."
I dispute that yiqtols are imperfects, or any given mood.
I accept that some yiqtols (more of them in emphatic narration, such as are
common in Tanakh) refer to the past events (contemporaries viewpoint), but
describe future events when we account for deictic shifts.
I accept that some yiqtols are used as idioms (such as ci-yiqtol) in the
fashion of English "would." The etymological sense of these idioms is
future, but narrators likely used idioms without that deep thought.
Some yiqtols are intelligible as future tense in Hebrew and Russian, but not
in English.
What I insist on, is that non-straight-future uses of yiqtol are clear from
the context, leaving no room for interpretation, and that by default yiqtols
should be read as future tense, unless the immediate context (not
interpretational needs) call to the contrary. (A kind of thing you do when 
encounter "will" in English: take for the future tense by default, and 
consider idiomatic usage if future is clearly inapplicable.)

Vadim Cherny