Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

It's really odd how we keep returning to the same subject over and over
again.
I demonstrated some time ago that all "future tense" uses of qatal are
deictic shifts which are, incidentally, fully paralleled in Russian and to
an extent in English. Such deictic shifts are pretty expected in energized
narrative.
Likewise, wayiqtols are very clearly the past tense verbs, again allowing
for the situation, typical in recital, that some wayiqtols means, "and he
would say," a matter of deictic shift.
No other explanation passes the Occam's razor and, as Rolf correctly noted,
is not consistent with earlier grammatical theories. The notion of
"prophetic perfect" is just funny because it presumes that other
(non-prophetic) Jews spoke a different dialect. Rolf is also right in
demanding explanations for the purported exceptions.

Vadim Cherny
http://vadimcherny.org/hebrew/grammatical_function_hebrew_yiqtol.htm
http://vadimcherny.org/hebrew/hebrew_verb_paradigms_originated.htm


> > You paint a carricature of my position. In view of all the times we have
> > discussed Hebrew verbs, you should be able to do better. I do not deny
> > exceptions and a substandard use of language. What I challenge is ad hoc
> > explanations in order to save a hypothesis. Therefore I make a
linguistic
> > demand that exceptions must be explained. For example, In the 19th
century
> > QATAL was viewed as past tense, and at the end of the century, as past
tense
> > or the perfective aspect. It was discovered that several QATALs had
future
> > reference, and in order to save the theory, the "prophetic perfect" was
> > postulated, the action was completed in the mind of the prophet. (A. B.
> > Davidson (1894) "Hebrew syntax") is a good example. The view has later
been
> > parroted by different grammarians, but I have never seen anyone proving
the
> > claim.
> >
>
> Several quite reasonable explanations of this situation have been put
> forward, mostly based on the idea (for which there is good phonological
> evidence) that WAYYIQTOL comes from a quite different early Semitic verb
> form from regular YIQTOL.
> > The principle of a property being uncancellable is very simple: Even a
> > shoolboy understands that the clauses "I will come yesterday" and "I
came
> > tomorrow" are ungrammatical. There is no purpose in trying to find a
special
> > situation where one of the clauses can be used.
> >
>
> "If I came tomorrow, I would be able to see him before he goes away the
> next day". This perfectly grammatical sentence proves that past tense is
> not uncancellable in English. Similarly there are perfectly grammatical
> constructions in which the past verb form in Hebrew is used with future
> reference, and vice versa. I don't see the difference in principle; if
> one is semantic, the other is semantic, if one is pragmatic, the other
> is pragmatic, or maybe this is not a meaningful distinction.
>
> In fact the reason why "If I came tomorrow..." is grammatical is that
> this is not really a past tense, but a subjunctive, but in English the
> past and the subjunctive have acquired almost identical forms. But the
> forms are distinct for the verb "to be", so "If I were in town
> tomorrow..." is historically more correct, not "If I was in town
> tomorrow..." Nevertheless, many speakers would say the latter because
> this subjunctive distinction is fading away. This is very similar to the
> evidence, not always consistent, from certain verb forms e.g. lamed-he
> verbs that WAYYIQTOL is "apocopated" which, according to a very
> plausible explanation, means that it comes from an originally separate
> verb paradigm which has mostly merged with regular YIQTOL.
>
> > If QATAL represents past tense, ...
>
> I am not arguing this, rather more like that QATAL is perfective aspect.
> I think we agree on this one, although we might disagree on precise
> definitions. My disagreement with you is largely on WAYYIQTOL, which I
> see as also perfective and semantically as well as morphologically
> distinct from imperfective YIQTOL.
>
> -- 
> Peter Kirk
> E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
> Blog:    http://www.qaya.org/blog/
> Website: http://www.qaya.org/
>
>
>