Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> > > Its etymology, like that of "will", is a verb meaning "want", as in "he 
> > > willed it to happen" - the remaining rare use of "will" as an
> > > independent verb has a regularised morphology but certainly the same 
> > > origin.
> > Nope. "Want" produced "will," and "will" produced "would."
>
> You lecture me on the etymology of my language?

Yep. Let me remind you that recently you rejected usage of "would" for 
future, and I provided you several examples of just such use, e.g., in 
polite or uncertain speech.

> > > Anyway, etymology is largely irrelevant to current meaning.
> >
> > Sure enough. And narrators employing ci-yiqtol did not dwell into its
> > etymological future tense. ...
>
> It is not etymological future tense, as is clear from cognate languages.

Now, that is curious. First you disputed that Russian speakers mean future
tense when they write it in historical mood, which parallels English "future
in the past" and Hebrew deictic shifts like in Gen2:6. I sent you an article
on Russian grammar confirming my views. Now you want to dispute the same
obvious fact for Semitic languages. Ok, go on. How is that clear from
cognate languages that ci-yiqtol is not etymologically future?

> > ... Note that deictic shifts and idioms are expectedly unusually common
> > in emphatic decidedly archaic narration like than in Tanakh.
>
> It is archaic now, but it was not archaic when it was written, it was the
> normal narrative form of the Hebrew of its time.

Of course, not! Isaiah, for example, deliberately used in Is53 archaic turns
from Job. Other writers decidedly used wayiqtols to impute the sense of
archaicity to the narration. Of course, writing in perhaps the fifth
century, they were concerned to make their writings sound ancient.

Vadim Cherny