On 17/09/2004 09:01, Rolf Furuli wrote:
Dear Peter,OK. But if you develop a model based on your 1% of verbs which is then contradicted by a large part of the 99%, surely there is something wrong with the model. I would accept that in 1% of WAYYIQTOLs the internal structure may be visible. But in 99%, or at least 90%, there is no indication of any kind of interest in the internal structure. But according to your model the aspect is semantic and so uncancellable. So you end up with the reductio ad absurdum that in a narrative passage with WAYYIQTOLs like Jonah 1:3 (chosen largely at random) there is forced to be an interest in the internal structure of no less than five successive events, some of which are more or less punctiliar; whereas you are left with no way which is actually used for the author to narrate a series of actions whose internal structure is not made visible.
I understand that your position is caused by your inductive approach to Hebrew verbs. My different conclusion is caused by the approach of distinguishing between semantic meaning and conversational pragmatic implicature. Less than one percent of all Hebrew verbs can be used to identify semantic meaning. In my view a quality approach (semantics) is much better than a quantity approach (pragmatics).
How do you deal with WAYYIQTOL forms of verbs which are strictly punctiliar, like the rather common WAYYAMOT "and he died"? How can these be imperfective?
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