Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Petr Tomasek <tomasek AT etf.cuni.cz>]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 08:17:44AM +0200, Vadim Cherny wrote:
> Dear Listmembers,
> 
> I would like to ask for your help.
> 
> Biblical Hebrew is not my day job, and I lack a degree in lexicology.  
> Practically speaking, I cannot publish an article in scholarly press.
> 
> It seems to me that I've stumbled over a coherent and simple  
> explanation of Hebrew tense problem:
> 
> wayyiqtol denotes deictic center shift: "And + Future Tense," "And he  
> would say."

How would this explain that wayyiqtol is used in most cases
as the main form used in a narration?

> weqatal denotes very strong commands or predictions:
> "Exclamation + Past Tense," "Have it done!" This, too, is related to  
> deictic center shift: the author treats the command as already done.
> Or, it can be highly assured predictions:
> u-bircaticha - I will have you blessed (past tense verb)
> weshavti - I will be settled [in the Temple]
> Possibly, weqatal is also employed in prophetic narrations with  
> deictic center shift.

How would you explain for example w-pf used in conditional clauses
where BOTH, the protasis and the apodosis are are beginning with
this form?
 
> I could not find any examples to contradict the above hypothesis.
>
> The question arises, naturally, why did so many distinguished scholars  
> miss that simple explanation? The answer, I submit, lies in linguistic  
> mentality: deictic center shifts are uncommon in Romance and Germanic  
> languages spoken by the majority of scholars. Strong commands using  
> past tense are near-absent in those languages, too. Both constructs,  
> however, are very common in Russian, which is my native language.
> 
> Would you please review the hypothesis? Any help would be deeply  
> appreciated.

Your hypothesis doesn't seem to me a plausible explanation of those
forms, actually I cannot find a single place in the Hebrew Bible where this
would explain the place better than other theories.

> Best regards,
> Vadim Cherny

-- 
Petr Tomasek <http://www.etf.cuni.cz/~tomasek>
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