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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Emerging consensus (and paedogogy) on "Waw Consecutive" PSS
  • Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 08:34:53 +0200

Dear Karl,

See my comments below.


Randall:



except that in these latter cases the word 'tense' does not
necessarily refer to time


?? Both in common definition and in the specialized SIL definition, I
understand "tense" to refer to time. So where does this timeless "tense"
come from?

There is no "timeless" tense! Bernard Comrie in his book "Tense" (1985, vii) defines tense as "grammaticalization of location in time." This means that the temporal reference of a verb is not caused by the context, but is an intrinsic part of the verb itself. Please consider the examples below. Examples 1), 2), and 3) show that the participle "walking" in not a tense, because its past, present, and future reference is caused by the context. The past reference of 4) is not caused by the context but by the verb "went," which has an intrinsic past tense. In other words, the form "went" represents a grammaticalization of past location.


1) Rita was walking to her office.

2) Rita is walking to her office.

3) Rita will be walking to her office.

4) Rita went to her office.

In hypothetical conditional sentences and other special cases, a verb that signals past tense may be used in a way where it seemingly refers to something different from past location. But a careful analysis will reveal that it has not lost its past force.

In order to to show the real issue in connection with Hebrew verbs, particularly WAYYIQTOL, I bring a quote from Comrie (1985:63):

"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 sequencing is part of the meaning of the verb forms used, thus introducing a meaning of 'immediate past' or 'immediate future' relative time reference (depending on whether one defined the time reference of the preceding verb in terms of the following verb, or vice versa). However, as was shown in section 1.8, this sequencing of events is a property of narrative itself, quite independent of the verb forms used to encode narrative, so the mere fact that verb forms receive this interpretation in narrative is not sufficient evidence for assigning this meaning to those verb forms. Indeed, crucially one would need to look for examples outside of narrative, where the context does not force the immediate succession interpretation, to demonstrate that this is actually part of the meaning of the form in question."

This important observation that it is the narrative itself that causes the sequences of verb with past reference and not the verb forms used, is almost completely ignored in studies of Hebrew verbs!!!! Moreover, the last words of Comrie show that the worst possible place to study WAYYIQTOLs in order to find their real meaning, are narrative accounts. Any verb form used in narratives must have past reference- not because the verb forms represent grammaticalized location in the past-but because the narrative requires past reference of the verbs used. This is seen in Ugaritic. In the saga of king Keret (or, Kirta) we first have an account with future reference telling what Kirta should do in the future and what should happen. Then we have a narrative account with exactly the same verbs and the same forms used with past reference. In Phoenician, infinitive absolute is the narrative form, but it is not a past tense. Examples are the Karatepe texts about king Azidawada.

Applying Comrie's words to Hebrew, most of the occurrences of WAYYIQTOL cannot tell us anything about the meaning of the form, because they occur in narrative contexts. But it is actually these narrative examples that have been used as proofs both of those who view WAYYIQTOL to be past tense and those who view the form to be the perfective aspect.

In WEYIQTOL forms, the WE- is viewed as a syntactical element, a conjunction that binds two words or clauses together. Therefore, the WE- has no grammatical meaning, and the forms beginning with WE- do not represent a grammaticalization of anything. In the same way we must ask if the WAY- element of WAYYIQTOL simply is a syntactical element used to bind sequences of clauses in narratives together, or whether it signals that grammaticalization has occurred. And remember, the answer to that question must be found by a study of the relatively few WAYYIQTOLs occurring outside narrative texts.

The work of Diethelm Michel, "Tempora und Satzstellung in den Psalmen" (1960) is a very fine source with a study of WAYYIQTOL outside narrative texts. But I cannot recall any other studies of this kind.



but to generically to a verb category that
marks some kind of tense-and/or-aspect-and/or-mood.
If one likes abstract notation one could talk about qatal "TAM-1" and
yiqtol "TAM-2" as the basic Hebrew verb system, with an additional
sequential vayyiqtol "seqTAM-1" and sequential ve-qatal "seqTAM-2".
These four nodes or categories and used in Hebrew to refer to the
whole referential world, not necessarily unambiguously.


I'm sorry, but I'm completely lost here.


I am also completely lost here! Particularly the words "some kind of" blurs the picture. These words show that PANTA REI.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo





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