Dear Paul,
Thank you for your posting. I haven't seen Bryan's book, and he has
kept out of this thread. So it seems that my idea is not so far from
what others are saying, despite Rolf trying to make it seem totally
hare-brained. Perhaps you or Bryan can point me and Rolf in the
direction of some more background to Bryan's "relative non-past" idea.
In fact Niccacci seems to say something similar: "We can affirm that
verb forms have FIXED TEMPORAL REFERENCE when they are verbal
sentences and/or indicate the mainline of communication both in
narrative and in direct speech. On the other hand, they have a
RELATIVE TEMPORAL REFERENCE when they are nominal clauses and indicate
a subsidiary line of communication." (By "nominal clause" Niccacci
seems to mean any clause which does not begin with a verb (or W- plus
verb). So he would I think call B:+EREM + YIQTOL "nominal", though
+EREM is hardly a noun.) (A. Niccacci, "On the Hebrew Verbal System",
in Bergen (ed.) "Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics",
Eisenbrauns 1994). But no further explanation is given in this brief
article.
I know I'm not really addressing Rolf's question. That's one reason
why I changed the subject line. I am rather putting a different
interpretation of the basic facts (a much simpler one) from the one
which is implied in his question. On my interpretation, his question
(at least as far as it is based on Jeremiah 47:1) becomes meaningless.
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