Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Joseph Justiss <jljustiss AT msn.com>]

Dear List Members
 
I want to invite your evaluation of the BH verbal system as proposed by 
Wolfgang Schneider and summarized below by John Sailhamer in his class 
lecture notes.
 
"In the Hebrew verb system, tense is used to signal the orientation of the 
speaker to the listener...In Hebrew the choice of tense depends on whether 
the action is part of a conversation or part of a narration....In Hebrew 
there are two sets of tense systems: a primary tense and a secondary tense. 
The primary tense is used to express the main action of a passage in the 
Hebrew Bible. The primary tense has only two forms.
     The secondary tense has only one form. It is used to express actions 
which lie in the background of those actions expressed in the primary tenses. 
In the Hebrew Bible, these two tense systems have merged to form one complete 
system of tenses."
 
He then identifies the primary tense for narrative as the wayyiqtol and the 
primary tense for discourse as the yiqtol. The qatal is secondary in both 
narrative and discourse. I can provide more details if anyone is interested, 
or even thinks this is a valid approach to the verb. It certainly is 
radically different from time and aspect models. It seeks to ask not "What 
type of action does a verb represent?", but rather What type of communication 
does the verb represent?".
 
Your thoughts?
Joseph Justiss                                    
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