Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Daniel Lundsgaard Skovenborg <waldeinburg AT yahoo.com>]

[snip]
> My question is if we are not over-analysing the grammar and especially the
> pointing of the tanach?
[snip]
> There was a long discussion on the meaning of katal, yiktol, wekatal and
> wayiktol in terms of being indicators of tense, aspect or something else.
> Did the ancient Hebrews really think in those linguistic terms? In
> Afrikaans it is quite common to relate past events using the present tense
> and it is perfectly understandable as having occurred in the past. Is there
> any reason that the Hebrews did not do something similar? And are we not
> making a mistake to use "counter-examples" to conclude that a certain
> "grammatical rule" cannot be true? I cannot conclude from the 
> occasional
> use of present tense (usually in a narrative) in Afrikaans for past events
> that it is not really the present tense form of the verb. Are we not
> confusing ourselves by making the Hebrew Grammar more difficult than it
> need to be and are many pronunciations and grammatical "oddities" not
> simply indications of how biblical Hebrew was spoken at a specific time and
> place? The most important thing is surely to ensure that we understand it
> as correctly as possible? Before we draw all kinds of grammatical
> conclusions from those occurrences of "curious" language usage we
> occasionally encounter.
> 
> Best Regards
> Chavoux Luyt

As I see it, it's a matter of having a proper linguistic framework.
Surely, we want to understand BH as correctly as possible. Yet, the moment we 
talk about *how* we understand BH we enter the field of metalanguage where we 
apply labels like "tense" and "aspect", draw weird diagrams and stuff to 
communicate with each other how we understand the language. Sometimes we make 
mistakes and apply metalanguage that describes meaning that isn't there – 
then, but only then, it is over-analysing.
You observation regarding Afrikaans is perfectly valid (Danish, English, and, 
dare I say it, Koiné Greek does the same), but I don't think it shows that 
linguistic discussion misses the point. What it does show, in my opinion, is 
that our linguistic framework needs to describe language in terms of the 
interplay of syntax, semantics and pragmatics; it cannot be limited to "form 
X carries the meaning of Y".
When you speak you have some meaning in a context you want to communicate and 
you use language to achieve this. For example, try to ask yourself regarding 
you mother tounge (Afrikaans, I presume): When you communicate about past 
events, is past or present tense the default choice? What effect does it have 
when you choose one instead of another? You will (hopefully:-)) find that it 
does make some kind of difference to the communication instead of just being 
some grammatical oddity. It's not easy to answer these questions regarding 
BH, because we can only try to induce the answers from the text.

Regards
Daniel Lundsgaard Skovenborg