Begin forwarded message:******************Hi Karl,For the Hebrew verb, not all meanings are equally likely in a given construction (contra Andrason, who seems to presume they are all equally available!). The process of narrowing down the options comes through the long, arduous, and endless task of refining our understanding of the patterns (e.g., yiqtol rarely expresses past habitual in direct speech—just to pick a random example).
I understand you when you describe Rolf's approach, but I don't find his approach well reasoned. Given that wayyiqtol appears 90% in past narrative, we have to ask several questions: Why is this verb form preferred for past narrative if not because it grammaticalizes past tense or perfective aspect (these are the most frequently used verb forms in past narrative in the world's languages)?
If the context only determines the past tense meaning, then is wayyiqtol semantically vaccuus?
How precisely do we know we are in a PAST narrative context apart from some tense indicator—which generally appears with the verb (to paraphrase Aristotle: the verb is that part of speech which, in addition to its lexical meaning, involves some element of TIME).
In other words, behind this approach is viciously circular reasoning that has been trenchantly criticized by linguists: how do we know that a verb form indicates a certain discourse type except that we can independently determine both verb meaning and discourse type, in which case what is the point in having the verb form signal the discourse type if we already know what type it is?
So what happens if we follow the lead of the verb forms and assume that they MEAN something apart from simply their context (i.e., that they contribute something to the expressions in which they occur)? It leads us to question the assumptions with which we approach the text. Your example of Proverbs 31:10-31 is a great case in point. In 2005 I wrote an article on the sentence literature of proverbs (i.e., excluding chap. 1-9 and the last few chapters) and the verb forms used there (see here: http://ancienthebrewgrammar.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/cook-2005-fox-fs_genericity.pdf). One thing I learned from the vast study of generic (proverbial) sayings among linguists was that there are no apparent limitations on verb tense in such sayings. In English, however, we tend to assume proverbial expressions are present tense, but what about Boys will be boys or Never did the course of love run smooth? These are used proverbially but are not present tense. Another thing I discovered was that past-tense anecdotes are a sort of "narrative" proverb, as in Prov 21:22, which has a perfect and wayyiqtol form. I translate it as follows: A wise man went up (QTL) to a city of strong men, and brought down (WAYY) its strong fortification. It is only our English proverbial style that leads us to interpret or translate this as present tense.
So, looking at Proverbs 31, where do the verb forms lead us? According to my count, the passage (vv. 10-31) consists of 20 QTL forms, 9 WAYY forms, and only 8 YQTL forms and 3 PTC forms. I won't bother translating the entire passage to clarify my interpretation, but I see no compelling reason not to interpret the description (vv. 11-31) as a past anecdotal description of the woman: the QTl and WAYY forms express past temporality, while the YQTL and PTC forms express past habitual (e.g., v. 14 'from afar she would bring her food'; v. 18 'her lamp in the night would not be extinguished'). If we take seriously that the verbs might contribute something to the context, we would less often (it is always a temptation) assume we already know what the passage is about—not simply in terms of content but grammar.
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