... And, a hypothesis should be formed in a way as
to be falsifyable.
... For example, one application of the falsification principle can be the following prediction: If the WAYYIQTOL is an independent conjugation coding for past tense, we will expect that the reference time of the actions of the clauses with WAYYIQTOL in the Tanakh occur before the deictic center; in a non-technical language: we will expect the WAYYIQTOLs to have past reference. If we can find a reasonable number of WAYYIQTOLs with non-past reference, the prediction is falsified. I will quickly add that in the examples with non-past tense we must be open for textual corruption, exceptions, special contexts, special conventions in different genres, diachronic questions, and that a language is a living medium etc. But these issues should be studied in a scientific way, and the examples should not be brushed away by the argument that languge is fuzzy, or the WAYYIQTOL is not yet fully grammaticalized as apast tense. ...
...OK then, if WAYYIQTOL is NOT a tense you would expect to find sentences of this kind with WAYYIQTOL and a temporal modifier like "tomorrow". Can you give us some examples like this in the Hebrew Bible?
"The relation between RT /reference time/ and C /the deictic center/ is part
of a truth conditional or semantic meaning and is therefore not cancelable, hence
the oddity of the temporal phrases of (6a-c), which attempt to cancel past,
present,and future reference, respectively.
(6) (a) #Jeanette was old tomorrow.
... The NWT is a translation for Bible students, since the translators tried to
convey the nuances of the verbs much more detailed than other versions. Thus, we
find hundreds of examples of WAYYIQTOLs rendered as "He began to..., he
proceeded to..., he continued to..., he was xxxing..., renderings that for
themostpart are lacking in other versions. ...
... There are also many other nuances that are conveyed, such as differences in meaningAs a Bible translator, I would say that these are not the kinds of things which should be rendered in a translation, because these are distinctions which are meaningful only to those who know the original language rather well and so have no need of a translation.
when a QATAL and a YIQTOL are used with future reference. The advantage of this for
the reader is the possibility to find details which are not found in other versions;
the disadvantage of a literal translation is the tendency to use many words and
sometimes the clauses become wooden. I can think of no better modern version for those
who are interested in the details of the original text than the NWT. I say this,
particularly because my study has shown that the translators were extremely (I mean
"extremely") careful to be consistent in the rendering of the Hebrew text;
infinitive constructs rendered in one way, e.g., infinitive avsolutes in another, and
participles still in another way whenever possible. This is not the case with other
versions
As for grammatical theory, the translation was made in the late 40s and early
50s, and the translators had to use the extant grammatical literature. In
addition, and this is clearly seen by a word-for-word comparison of the
Hebrew text and their renderings, in the comittee there were very competent
hebraists who worked independently with the Hebrew grammar. ...
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