Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

James, Rolf and others:

The argument below as stated I find as a false dilemma logical fallacy.

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 3:00 AM, David Kummerow<farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com> 
wrote:
>
> Hi James,
>
> Well, I'd like for you to explain how it may be analysed imperfectively.
> As far I take the default construal of wayyo'mer in Gen 12:1 in its
> context, event time is prior to the deictic centre, thus past. The
> action refers to the whole of the speech event, not some part of it, so
> therefore perfective. (God said all of what he said, not part of it.)
>
> Like I said, please explain how this verb could possibly be taken as
> imperfective in its context.
>
> Regards,
> David Kummerow.
>
By not interacting with what he admitted elsewhere that Rolf found
himself constrained to redefine “perfective” and “imperfective” for
the purposes of his dissertation, because the forms are not
grammaticalizations of the perfective and imperfective aspects as
known from, for example, Russian, the above argument becomes nonsense.

The argument could be made that Rolf would have been better served by
inventing neologisms and defining them so as to prevent confusion
between a common understanding of the terms “perfective” and
“imperfective” and what Rolf means by those terms. Personally, that’s
probably what I’d do. Though right now I am simply calling them Qatal
and Yiqtol and saying that I see them as grammaticalizations of . . .
When David admits that Rolf had redefined the terms but David doesn’t
interact based on that redefinition, that effectively makes his
argument nonsense.

Karl W. Randolph.