Dear Professor Nicacci,
From your analysis of Gen 1:5 you
should conclude that <qatal> also is past tense. So even if one accepts
that the forms encode tenses, that would not help in distinguishing between
them. I understand that you see <wayyiqtol> as past tense only in the
narrative material. But categories do not change their nature from one text
to the other. Their properties, which always exist, may be used differently
from one genre to the other, but they do not change.
When we translate the
verses into English (or any other language which has tenses - past,
present, future) we have to use tenses, as it is obligatory in Englsih. The
question is how do we know what tense to use. Following your analysis it
is not a problem in the case of <wayyiqtol>, since you see it as the past
tense, but what do you do with <qatal>, <yiqtol>, <wqatal> and <qotel>?
It
seems to me that you are doing what we all do, namely using the context.
But aren't you doing the same with <wayyiqtol>? You may want to say that
you are not, since there are no cases where <wayyiqtol> is understood as
present or future, while the other forms have different tense
interpretations in different enviroments (within the narrative material).
So, do you want to conclude that only <wayyiqtol> encodes tense, while the
other forms do not? This would be an unwarranted conclusion, theoretically
speaking. My contention is that NONE of the forms encodes tense, but while
all the forms would be interprted according to the context concerning tense
(when translated into English), <wayyiqtol> is always understood as
depicting events in the past. The question is why. In my book I show it to
be derived by elimination. < ...>
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