Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Dear David:

On 3/14/07, David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com> wrote:
...
> I raised the point that the same distributional situation applies in BH:
> 'ethmol and 'emesh are restricted to qatal and machar is restricted to
> yiqtol. My take is that these are tense restrictions: 'ethmol and 'emesh
> like English "yesterday" select the past tense while machar like English
> "tomorrow" selects the future tense. But given that you reject a
> tense-prominent analysis, what is your explanation of this
> distributional verbal restriction with temporal adverbs?
>
> Regards,
> David Kummerow.
'Ethmol and 'emesh together are used only about 13 times: isn't that
sample small enough that they are used only with qatal (or wayyiqtol)
merely a function of chance?

Machar is used more often (about 52 times), usually referring to the
future. However, there are times, like Exodus 17:9, Joshua 11:6 and
possibly other times where it is used with a qatal.

Yours, Karl W. Randolph.