Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Stoney,

The Latin verb NARRO means "to tell something,2 and factual and 
fictious events can be told in many ways. The evangelist Mark, for 
example, often uses what is called historic present when he tells 
something. However, in a technical linguistic sense "narrative" has a 
more restricted meaning. In "Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics" 
a part of Davis Crystal's definition of the word is as follows: "A 
narrative is seen as a recapitulation of past experience in which 
language is used to structure a sequence of (real or fictious) 
events."

David Comrie in his book "Tense" (1985:61) has the following comments 
regarding narrative:

"In looking for examples of relative time reference, it is essential 
to ensure that the relative time reference interpretation is part of 
the meaning of the form in question, rather than an implicature 
derived from, in part, the context. One area which is particularly 
confusing in this respect is narrative, where one gains the 
impression of a sequence of events which are located temporally one 
almost immediately after the other, the chronological sequence 
mirrored in the linear order of clauses. Thus one might be tempted to 
think that this sequence is part of the meaning of the verb forms 
used, thus introducing the meaning of 'immediate past'' or 'immediate 
future' relative time reference (depending of whether one defined the 
time reference of the preceding verb in terms of the following verb, 
vice versa).  However, as was shown in section 1,8 the sequencing of 
events is a property of the narrative itself, quite independent of 
the verb forms used to encode narrative, so that the mere fact that 
the verb forms receive this interpretation in narrative is not 
sufficient evidence for assigning the meaning of these verb forms."

The point I tried to convey, was that when the WAYYIQTOL form so 
often is used in Hebrew narrative, this does not mean that the form 
itself is grammaticalized past. Past reference is the very nature of 
narrative (in the technical linguistic sense), and therefore any form 
used in narrative sequences irrespective of the semantic meaning of 
the form, must have past reference. Please note that I speak of 
narrative sequences, and not of situations where a sequence is broken 
by direct speech or anything else.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo



> Rolf:
>
> My faith in the admirable clarity and rigor of your analysis is
> profoundly shaken by this:
>
> >  It is a fundamental linguistic truth that verbs used in narratives
> have past reference.
>
> On what basis do you make this assertion? It seems to me neither
> self-evident nor borne out by linguistic fact, teste folktale and joke
> on the one hand, and the practice of many eminent writers of fiction on
> the other.
>
> Stoney Breyer
> Writer / Touchwood Creative
>
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