Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

>
> I do not speak of tense, only of temporal reference, because
> I find that BH has no tenses at all.  I found the following verbs
> with present reference:
>
> YIQTOL 2,462     18.1%
> WAYYIQTOL:  420   2.9%
> QATAL: 2,505    18%

The reason that I defined the situation tightly is so that we can get
an actual present situation, your 'temporal reference', and not a
'present' gloss in another language. We're on the same page,
on this.

We should also note that
so far, no one has brought forward an example about how
our time-travelling Jeremiah is going to address the Hebrew
class. Would any of your 2462 YIQTOLs fit?

And yes, I need to
use the restrictions of
a. no questions,
b. no poetry, and
c. no habitual/omnitemporal/timeless. (these aren't 'present' by this
definition. negations are covered here, too, since they can be a
kind of negated contingency rather than an actual present). why
poetry? With Ugaritic and Canaanite/Hebrew QATAL//YIQTOL
troping, one cannot be too careful.

Let me give a couple of positive examples of what I'm looking for:

Gen 37:15-16
(Yosef wandering in the coutryside)

 man: ma tevaqqesh?       "what are you looking for? what would you
                                                be looking for?"
       (questions can be a special register in a language, it is fairly
common to have yiqtol in questions about something present)

Yosef:  et aHai anoxi mevaqqesh  ... (my brothers I am looking for)
         (participle dealing with the positive, immediate, concurrent 
situation.

this is one example.

Yosef's continuation is not an example, even though it might appear to
fit:
 ... efo hem ro`im    ("where are they shepherding?" Since this
is both a question and dealing with something not physically
immediate, one could imagine other options here, too.)

A second example:
We'll go to Jeremiah to prepare for our time traveller:

Jer 1.11
The word of the Lord:
ma atta ro`e, Yermiyahu?   (participle as a question , so not an example)
Yermiyahu:
maqel shaqed ani ro`e   (an almold stick I see)

This is an example. It is positive, immediately present to a conversation.
It is not contingent ("might be seeing"), nor a negation, but an actual 
present.

These two examples are the kind of thing that happens alot in a
beginning langugage class.

So while the students are communicating,
they are internalizing the morphology, thinking in and with a little piece of
the language, and doing this with the most appropriate forms that we
can supply for biblical Hebrew. And for things like this, without English
or French or Arabic or Greek.

So my question becomes,
could Yermiyahu have said
maqel shaqed ere`e  (yiqtol form)
for a plain vanilla reference to that present situation?

This is by far the most common response that I get from Hebrew
teachers. I am open to allowing such if it is biblical Hebrew.
But it was five unambiguous examples of such that I haven't found.

I have found a couple of 'arguables', but one of those was an
unvocalized inscription with a better way to be read than an alleged yiqtol
for an immediate, simple, concurrent, present situation.

This can be tricky, I hope people appreciate.
For example, Yermiyahu
could have said maqel shaqed ra'iti in this situation in good biblical
Hebrew, but I would see that as changing his reference to the item.

What is certainly clear to me, though, is that one must admit
that a participle makes for a good reference to an actual, immediate
present situation.

In biblical Hebrew.

blessings
Randall

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
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