Dear List,
I ran across the article below several months ago. But, do to the recent threads
on this list regarding the Hebrew verb, etc., I thought you may want to read the
review of an article by Randall Buth. See Below. Considering the recent threads
it would probably be good to review the article with the other mentioned
recently by Bowling and Tsunamara.
More background comments from me: probably the majority of
materials written for beginner and scholar alike call the yiqtol an 'imperfect'
or an 'imperfective'. Those labels have a potential to mislead a person in BH
future contexts. In future contexts the overwhelming majority of references are
to situations that are being conceived of perfectively [!] as 'complete/whole',
howbeit in a future time. If someone says 'maHar yavo ' ÓÁ¯ÝÈ·Âý "tomorrow he
will come", the default reference is not to "he will be in the process of
coming", the default implication is that the person 'will arrive tomorrow'. In
other words, in Hebrew the yiqtol refers to future contexts without specifying
the aspect, least of all imperfective! As Andrason writes, future yiqtol "is an
aspectually neutral tense" (Andrason, p. 53). This is exactly the opposite to
what some students and too many scholars assume, based on the name 'imperfect'.
Many scholars have avoided this pitfall. The Jouon Muraoka reference grammar is
based on Jouon 1923 where he intuitively called the yiqtol a 'future'. The
problem, though, is that the yiqtol is also a past imperfective. Hence, we
encounter the need to recognize a fusion taking place with the parameters of
time and aspect in the Hebrew yiqtol. Mood interacts with yiqtol too, but it is
more complicated to define and will not be highlighted in this brief discussion
and review. See "The Hebrew Verb: A Short Syntax" for further integration of
yiqtol with mood and the Hebrew volitional system.
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