Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> > ... And then, I explained why the odd "future perfect" is just future 
> > tense with
> > deictic shift, not a separate mood or tense. ...
>
>
> But it is not "the odd", this is a regular and rather common usage, over 
> 1000 times in the Hebrew Bible.

Native speakers of Russian and, likely, of classical Hebrew digest these 
turns as future tense. But English speakers are not accustomed to such use 
of future tense, and label them as aspects where Russians see a slight shade 
of meaning. It is telling that I never encountered that notion of "perfect 
future" in Russian grammars.

> > ... 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, ...
>
> No, I claim that this usage of YIQTOL is not future, not at all future, 
> has no relationship to the future at all.

Even etymological?

> It is an imperfective form referring to a past continuous or repeated 
> event.

Your example of Gen2:10 is neither past continuous nor repeated. Besides, I 
am not sure how repeated but finished event could be imperfect. Ahab met 
Nabot in the example from 1Kings, that's it; where do you see imperfect 
there?

> YIQTOL is not at all analogous with this use of the English "will" form. 
> YIQTOL is NOT future, in biblical Hebrew. You promised to retract this 
> claim when I provided the evidence. I provided the evidence. Now you will 
> retract it, future imperative - at least if you want to retain any 
> credibility at all.

You agreed with my explanation of future in your examples; it is only your 
English-speaking mentality that prevents you from reading future in these 
examples at face value.

> > 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. ...
>
> No one here has said that YIQTOLs are "imperfects" (Russian имперфект), 
> for this is a label for a type of tense like English "I was doing" or the 
> Russian imperfective past. The claim is that YIQTOL represents the 
> imperfective aspect, corresponding to the Russian несовершенный вид, which 
> can be past, present or future but must be continuous or repetitive.

Yeah? Continuous or repetitive? How many times, in your Gen2 examples, the 
earth was watered? How many times Ahab met Nabot? 2Kings8:29: for how long 
those dreary Arameans were inflicting wounds on the poor king?
Doesn't it ring a bell that Hebrew, Russian and English - all of them use 
either future or future-related (would) to describe the same action? 
Perhaps, that action has something with the future?
Every action could be labeled continuous; so your definition of yiqtol a 
priori fits all cases. Don't you see that?
Now, I explain that yiqtol is future. Sure enough, over the centuries its 
usage diversified. Idioms appeared; deictic shifts were common. Like in 
every language. But those meanings are related to future tense by common 
etymology.

> I accept that YIQTOL may also be used for future actions which are not 
> continuous or repetitive

That seems to invalidate your earlier assertion that yiqtol is imperfective?

> Well, I agree that the narrators used YIQTOL without understanding them as 
> future, and that implies further that we agree that this is not a future 
> tense.

Does an American mom telling her child, "You will eat it!" understand her 
phrase as imperative? Narrators just did not care about tenses.

> > ... 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, ...
>
> I see absolutely no room for interpretation as future in Genesis 2:6,10 - 
> unless you are claiming that the Garden of Eden is future?

No room? Well, why Russian and Hebrew both employ future tense in such 
turns? Sure it is more than coincidence? And I did, did show clearly how a 
deictic shift occurs, how a narrator of an important account re-lives the 
events, how he is transposed back before the event he describes in future 
tense. partition of the river of Eden is past for me or for the first 
readers, but it was in the immediate future for the narrator whose time 
reference point shifted back.

Vadim Cherny