Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 23/09/2005 12:49, Vadim Cherny wrote:

> > > > 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. ...


The article you sent me was mostly about the historic present, found in 
many languages, which in Russian sometimes uses normally future forms. 
Now I wonder whether those who speak or write the historic present, in 
any language, are making a conscious deictic shift, or are simply using 
the verb forms in an idiomatic way. An interesting question to which I 
have no clear answer.

> ... Ok, go on. How is that clear from cognate languages that ci-yiqtol 
> is not etymologically future?


Look at the cognates of the YIQTOL form and you will find that they are 
consistently imperfective rather than future. This implies the same of 
the proto-Semitic analogue of YIQTOL. Of course we can only speculate 
about any etymology before proto-Semitic.

> > > ... 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.
Isaiah 53 is not narrative but poetry. I accept that in some places 
there may be deliberate archaism (as suggested for Esther) and in others 
quotations from older books. But, unless you can provide evidence to the 
contrary, I shall continue to assume that the narrative style of the 
great bulk of the Hebrew Torah and historical books is in the natural 
narrative style of the time when it was written or edited, and not in a 
deliberately archaic style.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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