Again, for John... ________________________________ James Spinti E-mail marketing, Book Sales Division Eisenbrauns, Good books for more than 35 years Specializing in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Studies jspinti at eisenbrauns dot com Web: http://www.eisenbrauns.com Phone: 260-445-3118 Fax: 574-269-6788
Begin forwarded message: > From: "John A. Cook" <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: b-hebrew Digest, Vol 120, Issue 21 > Date: December 13, 2012 1:12:24 PM CST > To: James Spinti <[email protected]> > > Dear Rolf, > > Thank you for clarifying that your reasoning is not following the > well-recognized circular reasoning of discourse linguists of the Weinrich > school of thinking. Beyond that I can only ask you to reconsider your post, > because it appears you are inconsistent: on the one hand, you define > narrative a sequence of events; on the other hand, you claim that a verb in > narrative "per definition has past reference." First of all, your given > definition of narrative does not include past reference. Second, I think you > might well adopt a more rigorous definition of narrative: a narrative event > consists of two or more events in iconic order (i.e., given in the order in > which they occur); the test of such a sequence is the irreversibility > property: two events in narrative sequence cannot be related in a different > order without altering the sense of the expression. (These are not my > definitions; these go back some years in the linguistic literature and are > documented in my JSS article as well as chap. 4 of my book.) > > John > http://ancienthebrewgrammar.wordpress.com/ > > > On Dec 13, 2012, at 12:00 PM, [email protected] wrote: > >> ------------------------------ >> >> Message: 8 >> Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:28:01 +0100 >> From: "Rolf" <[email protected]> >> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] More on verbs >> To: [email protected] >> Message-ID: <29b8-50c9f400-1-3245000@1041868> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" >> >> 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 >
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