Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Stephen,

See below,


> I'm happy to rephrase my main conclusion so as not to get tangled in 
> arguments over the meaning of the word "tense":
> (1) In a language with a past tense verb form, it is possible for 
> there to be linguistic contexts in which this form is not used with 
> past reference; indeed, this form may have other "semantic meanings" 
> which do not primarily express time.
>
> If this is not the case, please explain how, in my example, the 
> reference time for "walked" is in the past with respect to the 
> deictic centre. (Does this then have implications for a theory of 
> "uncancellable meaning" in the English simple past conjugation?)
>
> My question, then, was to what extent you might have considered that 
> WAYYIQTOL (or any other verbal conjugation, for that matter) might 
> have multiple, mutually exclusive meanings: principally as a past 
> tense, but possibly with quite different meaning(s) in other 
> grammatical contexts, as with English -ed.


I would like to compare your words above with a quote from 
Waltke/O'Connor (460) when they discuss different tense theories. 
First they discuss WAYYIQTOL, saying: "While it may be true that 
wayqtl most often designates past time, it does not always have this 
value." Then they give some statistics regarding YIQTOL, and at the 
end of the paragraph they ask: "How can forms each of which 
"represent" all three English major tenses have a primarily temporal 
value?"

Do the words of Waltke/O'Connor contradict your words? Not at all. 
And the same is true with the claim of Broman Olsen that 
uncancellable meaning do exist. That the phrasal verb "break through" 
cannot loose its telicity and "sing" cannot loose its dynamicity and 
durativity does not contradict the fact that verbs in different 
languages can be used in many different ways. So uncancellable 
meaning can exist and do exist in the languages of the world side by 
side with many other language parts with multipel meanings. This does 
not lead to linguistic anarchy, because there are rules and patterns.

For example, there is a semantic difference between the English 
participle and English perfect, which I take as the imperfective and 
perfective aspect respectively. In clauses with the participle, 
reference time intersects event time at the nucleus, while in clauses 
with the perfect, reference time intersects event time at the coda. 
This means that the imperfective aspect portrays events as continuing 
while the perfective aspect portrays events as completed. Because of 
this semantic difference, my previous example, "Rita was reaching the 
peak," can only be interpreted as she was on the point of reaching 
the peak, not that she had reached it. In another post I quoted the 
clause "Crossing the floor, she opened the cupboard," which could be 
viewed as a counterexample. But this clause occurs in a special 
poetic context, and that can explain its use. This indicates that 
while languages to some extent are fluid, it does not mean that panta 
rei, everything goes. Examples where clauses with the participle 
portray completed events, and examples where clauses with the perfect 
portrays ongoing events must be explained as special cases.

And this is the basis for my approach to Hebrew verbs and the 
question of tense. If a verb form has an intrinsic temporal value 
(representing "grammaticalization of location in time") I expect a 
uniform temporal reference of the forms. I found that this was not 
case for WAYYIQTOL, and the question was whether these forms could be 
explained as special cases, i.e., whether they occurred in clauses or 
contexts being different from those with past reference. But that was 
not the case, and I concluded that WAYYIQTOL has no intrinsic past 
tense.

To answer your question above directly, I have not considered that 
WAYYIQTOL might have mutually exclusive meanings, that it for example 
both may have an intrinsic past meaning and an intrinsic future 
meaning. I think I am on a solid linguistic ground when I reject such 
a possibility. But I have considered a modal use, that it can be used 
for other possible worlds.

I would like to add that all the examples I present in my 
dissertation that YIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL have similar meanings, and the 
Ugaritic examples where the prefix form is used extensively with 
future meaning and in the same context it is used extensively with 
past meaning, and the Phoenician examples of infinitive absolute with 
prefixed WAW being the narrative form,  corroborate the use of the 
prefix form both with past and future meaning in BH.

> Thank you for explaining your methodology further ... though I was 
> left a little uncertain of the answer. One of your initial 
> assumptions seems to be that a given verb form must have uniform 
> temporal reference to qualify as a tense. I have tried to 
> demonstrate that this is not the case - especially when, as in the 
> case of English -ed, the vast majority of instances do have the same 
> temporal reference.
>
> On the other hand, you indicated that you did consider that non-past 
> WAYYIQTOLs could be explained as "exceptions" (for pragmatic or 
> diachronic/grammaticalization reasons). I would have to read your 
> thesis to assess this properly.
>
> Given that this conversation seems to have centred on my English 
> example and theoretical presuppositions rather than on BH per se, 
> I'm happy to leave it there. I still have no idea whether this has 
> any impact on WAYYIQTOL! (Though I suspect it does in the case of 
> YIQTOL.) I've expressed my argument as clearly as I can, and if you 
> still reject my conclusions, I guess we'll agree to disagree.
>
> Regards,
> Stephen Shead
> Centro de Estudios Pastorales
> Santiago, Chile


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo