Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear James,

To speak of completely unambiguous contexts in a dead language is 
very difficult. This is so because in any analysis there is an 
element of subjective judgement. I will illustrate this with a German 
example which has a perfect counterpart in Norwegian, but not in 
English:

Someone says, "Heute (today) ist (is) strahlendes (sparkling) Wetter 
(weather)." How would people interpret this clause? Most people would 
say that it is an unambiguous statement indicating that the sun is 
shining, probably from a blue sky. Yet another person might say; "I 
think the meaning is that it is raining." Why? Because the one who 
uttered the statement could view each raindrop as a "Wasserstrahl" 
(sparkling water)." This interpretation is not completely impossible, 
but extremely forced and unnatural. And by which indicators could we 
completely exclude the second interpretation? The example is used to 
show that even extreme interpretations cannot be completely ruled out.

Now, we may take a look at one example where the analyses of Randall 
and me differs, namely 2 Samuel 18:27 (NIV)

The watchman said (WAYYIQTOL), "It seems to me that the first one 
runs (PARTICIPLE) like Ahimaaz son of Zadok."  "He's a good man 
(NOMINAL CLAUSE)," the king said (WAYYIQTOL). "He comes (YIQTOL) with 
good news."

My analysis goes like this:  A runner came with good or bad news. The 
watchman had identified the runner as Ahimaaz. The king accepts this 
identification and says (with a nominal clause) that he is a good 
man, and connects this with good news with which YBW. There is 
nothing in the construction of the clause that would indicate 
modality, and ten English translations that I consulted have the 
clause in the indicative, "he comes with good good news/tidings".

Randall's comments is as follows:

"And how do we know that the speaker is describing an actual present and not
referring to something probable, potential or future? The runner had not yet
arrived since it was a conversation between the lookout and the king when the
king made his comment."

Randall's comments are not extreme. We cannot rule out a modal, 
potential, or future force, but there is nothing in the context or in 
the syntax or grammar that would suggest that. So persons who have 
not decided that a YIQTOL cannot be used in a real ongoing present 
situation, take this clause as present indicative, as the Bible 
translations show.
Seeking recourse in modality is often a possibility, even if there is 
no contextual indication of that. To find completely unambiguous 
examples of present reference in BH is difficult, and I wonder how 
many examples Randall can refer to where a participle occurs with 
present reference where it is impossible to take it differently.

It is easier to have clear contexts in connection with verbs with 
past reference, and also to a great extent with verbs with future 
reference than in connection with verbs with present reference. But 
even in narratives there may be breaks with verbs with non-past 
reference. So in my view, it is not possible to make statistics of 
verbs in completely unambiguous contexts. When we analyze a verb, we 
should in each case carefully look at the context and see if the 
analysis has a strong foundation. For example, I do not think that 
anyone would deny that the three	WAYYIQTOLs and three YIQTOLs 
in 2 Samuel 12:3 (the example I used previously) have past reference.

Moreover, statistics have clear limitations, because we cannot on the 
basis of the numbers of a particular form with a rather uniform but 
not perfect temporal reference learn what the meaning of the form is 
- except if all the occurrences (save a few that can be explained) 
have the same temporal meaning. More about this in the next post.

Best regrds,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo



> Hi Rolf and All,
>
> I think recent discussions on temporal understanding of verb forms 
> could be put in a better context if we had figures of how many verb 
> forms are in a completely unambiguous context. Rolf, can you provide 
> such statistics and what indicators you used to decide which are 
> completely unambiguous?
>
> James Christian
>
> --
> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.