Dear John, In order to avoid focusing on several points at the same time, in this post I discuss just one of your points.
> > > >> From: John Cook <[email protected]> > >> Date: December 12, 2012, 10:42:30 AM EST > >> To: "[email protected]"; <[email protected]> > >> Subject: Tense > >> > >> **Forgive my tardy taking up of this thread; I had previously submitted > >> this from the wrong e-mail and it bounced!** > >> > >> Dear Rolf, Frank, et al, > >> > >> Let me respond briefly to some of Rolf's comments on this specific > >> passage, as it is generally instructive: > >> > >>> RF: If you expect the readers to understand what you write, in this case > >>> you must define "tense." I agree that the reference is past, and why can > >>> we say that? Because 2:19 is a part of a piece of narrative. And the > >>> verbs that carry the action forward in narratives have by definition past > >>> reference. But these verbs need not have past tense or have the > >>> perfective aspect; In Phoenician, infinitive absolutes are used as > >>> narrative verbs, and they neither are tenses nor aspects. I analyze the > >>> verse in the following way: The setting is the creation of animals and > >>> birds, bringing them to Adam, and the naming of these. All this must have > >>> taken some time, as you observe. > >> > >> > >> This is a wonderfully clear illustration of the viciously circular > >> reasoning we need to avoid to make headway: of course the verb in 2:19 has > >> a past reference because it is part of a narrative, which is past by > >> definition; and how do we know that it is a past narrative, because the > >> verbs that make it past indicate that to us (so would Weinrich argue > >> too!). Can any deny that this is viciously circular and begs the whole > >> question of what the verb forms actually indicate since presumably we can > >> tell this is narrative apart from the verbs but yet discourse analysis > >> tells us the verbs indicate the type of discourse. > >> RF: Your accusation of circular reasoning is strange indeed. I agree with the following definition of circular reasoning: "Circular reasoning: a use of reason in which the premises depends on or is equivalent to the conclusion, a method of false logic by which "this is used to prove that, and that is used to prove this; also called circular logic." (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Circular+reasoning) I understand the term "narrative" as "the telling of a story or an account of a sequence of events." The sequence of events consists of clauses with verbs (although nominal clauses can be included). Several factors signal that a group of sentences constitute a narrative, particularly the lexical meaning of the words of the clauses, and the verbs carrying the action forward. In circular logic, the premise is equivalent to the conclusion. If I understand you correctly, your premise is that a narrative verb must either be grammaticalized past tense or perfective, and therefore, your conclusion is that because Genesis 2:19 is a part of a narrative, the WAYYIQTOLs must be grammaticalized past tense or perfective. I do not start with such a premise, but I say that a narrative verb per definition has past reference, but it needs not be grammaticalized past tense or perfective; the example I gave was the 41 infinitive absolutes in the Karatepe inscription, 16 of which have a prefixe d WAW. So, I worked to find the real nature of the WAYYIQTOLs with the help of the parameters deictic center, event time, and reference time, without starting with a premise that was equivalent to the conclusion, and without knowing what the conclusion would be. So, I leave it to the members of b-greek to judge where the circular reasoning is. Best regards, Rolf Furuli Stavern Norway _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
