...English irregular verbs, are they more than 27% of the total? ...
... Your figure of 26.9% is an overestimation on two counts, as you noted: the
figure 13,619 does not include popular wayiqtols, ...
... and Rolf's 3,000 likely
includes many normal future tense yiqtols which he prefers to read as past
reference according to his views of the context. ...
... So, ballpark, perhaps 15% of yiqtols are not straight future tense, possibly
even less. ...
... 15% for idioms and deictic shifts doesn't sound tremendous.
...
Some difficulty in coming to the common ground arises when Hebrew uses
future case in a way intelligible to Russian speakers, but not to English.
Such is Genesis 37:15, “A man asked him, asking, What do you want (future
tense)?” Even in English, the question is oriented into the future.
Ultra-polite Russian equivalent, “Что изволите?” is future.
Just a single example of clear usage of yiqtol as past tense or imperfect
would suffice for me to retract. But something clear, like "yesterday he
yiqtol." If Rolf, with his immense experience in fishing for dubious
yiqtols, could bring just one such example, the discussion would be over.
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