Now, that is curious. First you disputed that Russian speakers mean future tense when they write it in historical mood, which parallels English "future in the past" and Hebrew deictic shifts like in Gen2:6. I sent you an article on Russian grammar confirming my views. Now you want to dispute the same obvious fact for Semitic languages. ...
The article you sent me was mostly about the historic present, found in many languages, which in Russian sometimes uses normally future forms.
Now I wonder whether those who speak or write the historic present, in any language, are making a conscious deictic shift, or are simply using the verb forms in an idiomatic way. An interesting question to which I have no clear answer.
... Ok, go on. How is that clear from cognate languages that ci-yiqtol is not etymologically future?
Look at the cognates of the YIQTOL form and you will find that they are consistently imperfective rather than future.
Isaiah, for example, deliberately used in Is53 archaic turns from Job. Other writers decidedly used wayiqtols to impute the sense of archaicity to the narration. Of course, writing in perhaps the fifth century, they were concerned to make their writings sound ancient.Isaiah 53 is not narrative but poetry.
I accept that in some places there may be deliberate archaism (as suggested for Esther) and in others quotations from older books. But, unless you can provide evidence to the contrary, I shall continue to assume that the narrative style of the great bulk of the Hebrew Torah and historical books is in the natural narrative style of the time when it was written or edited, and not in a deliberately archaic style.
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.