Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rolf" <rolf.furuli AT sf-nett.no>]

Dear John,

In order to avoid focusing on several points at the same time, in this post I 
discuss just one of your points.
 

> > 
> >> From: John Cook <jacookvwbus AT yahoo.com>
> >> Date: December 12, 2012, 10:42:30 AM EST
> >> To: "b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org"; <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> >> Subject: Tense
> >> 
> >> **Forgive my tardy taking up of this thread; I had previously submitted 
> >> this from the wrong e-mail and it bounced!**
> >> 
> >> Dear Rolf, Frank, et al,

> >> 
> >> Let me respond briefly to some of Rolf's comments on this specific 
> >> passage, as it is generally instructive:
> >> 
> >>> RF: If you expect the readers to understand what you write, in this 
> >>> case you must define "tense." I agree that the reference is past, and 
> >>> why can we say that? Because 2:19 is a part of a piece of narrative. 
> >>> And the verbs that carry the action forward in narratives have by 
> >>> definition past reference. But these verbs need not have past tense or 
> >>> have the perfective aspect; In Phoenician, infinitive absolutes are 
> >>> used as narrative verbs, and they neither are tenses nor aspects. I 
> >>> analyze the verse in the following way: The setting is the creation of 
> >>> animals and birds, bringing them to Adam, and the naming of these. All 
> >>> this must have taken some time, as you observe.
> >> 
> >> 
> >> This is a wonderfully clear illustration of the viciously circular 
> >> reasoning we need to avoid to make headway: of course the verb in 2:19 
> >> has a past reference because it is part of a narrative, which is past by 
> >> definition; and how do we know that it is a past narrative, because the 
> >> verbs that make it past indicate that to us (so would Weinrich argue 
> >> too!). Can any deny that this is viciously circular and begs the whole 
> >> question of what the verb forms actually indicate since presumably we 
> >> can tell this is narrative apart from the verbs but yet discourse 
> >> analysis tells us the verbs indicate the type of discourse.
> >> 

RF: Your accusation of circular reasoning is strange indeed. I agree with the 
following definition of circular reasoning: 

"Circular reasoning: a use of reason in which the premises depends on or is 
equivalent to the conclusion, a method of false logic by which "this is used 
to prove that, and that is used to prove this; also called circular logic."

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Circular+reasoning)

I understand the term "narrative" as "the telling of a story or an account of 
a sequence of events."  The sequence of events consists of clauses with verbs 
(although nominal clauses can be included). Several factors signal that a 
group of sentences constitute a narrative, particularly the lexical meaning 
of the words of the clauses, and the verbs carrying the action forward. In 
circular logic, the premise is equivalent to the conclusion. If I understand 
you correctly, your premise is that a narrative verb must either be 
grammaticalized past tense or perfective, and therefore, your conclusion is 
that because Genesis 2:19 is a part of a narrative, the WAYYIQTOLs must be 
grammaticalized past tense or perfective. I do not start with such a premise, 
but I say that a narrative verb per definition has past reference, but it 
needs not be grammaticalized past tense or perfective; the example I gave was 
the 41 infinitive absolutes in the Karatepe inscription, 16 of which have a 
prefixe
 d WAW. So, I worked to find the real nature of the WAYYIQTOLs with the help 
of the parameters deictic center, event time, and reference time, without 
starting with a premise that was equivalent to the conclusion, and without 
knowing what the conclusion would be.

So, I leave it to the members of b-greek to judge where the circular 
reasoning is.

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
Stavern
Norway