...
As mentioned, grammatical theories are needed, but in order to let the
theories disturb or influence the material under study (the text of the
Tanakh ) as little as possible, I try to differentiate between semantic and
pragmatic factors in the text. ...
... For example, when I observe (observation is basically theory-independent) that WAYYIQTOLs very often
occur in narrative texts and describe past, completed situations, I do not conclude: "WAYYIQTOL
represents past tense," or "WAYYIQTOL represents the perfective aspect". But I ask,
"The past, completed reference, is it an intrinsic part of the WAYYIQTOL form itself, or is it caused
by contextual factors?" This cannot be answered by the prototype theory or the grammaticalisation
theory, but only by a careful study of all the WAYYIQTOLs. ...
... Interestingly, as Comrie observes, any verb form,regardlessof it
ownmeaning, used as the narrative verb must signal past completed actions -
this is the very nature of narratives. ...
... Therefore, contrary to the common opinion, the least likely place to find the real
meaning of the WAYYIQTOL in Hebrew and the infinitive absolute in Phoenician is in
narrative texts. In order to find out whether WAYYIQTOL represents past tense or the
perfective or imperfective aspect we have to look for situations which are so
restricted that the real nature of WAYYIQTOL is seen. There are particularly three
situations where the imperfective nature of the form is visible, 1) conative situations
(attempts that were not carriedout), 2) ingressive events (the event starts and
continues without reaching the end, and 3) intersection of one event by another
(similar to "when Rita was reading (WAYYIQTOL) the paper, John entered the
room."
...Well, scientists do not insist that an aberrant result which doesn't fit the theory has to be explained or else the theory is invalid. Instead, they accept that there will be experimental errors, and look for general patterns without worrying about trying to explain a small number of exceptions. Similarly in Hebrew, and in any real language text, there are a number of factors which may cause apparent exceptions, results which are far from fitting the theory; I listed some of these factors above.
One last point: Both you and Peter have said that my approach is not worable in natural
language. That is wrong! I accept exceptions exactly as you do. But I demand that
pointing to exceptions in Hebrew should not be ad hoc (when a verb contradicts one“s
theory, it is labelled as an exception), but it should be explained why a verb deserve
the label "exception".
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