As I see it, it is not WAY + YIQTOL, but WA+YI+QTL. I am really
baffled. I look intently at what you are saying, but fail to see
there any difficulty. what you call "code for future" appears to me
to be but the convention of PP+act, as opposed to act+PP for the
"code of the past". In WA-YI-GA$ the -YI- reverts to be just a
personal pronoun (PP) for the performer of the act GA$.
Isaac Fried, Boston University
On May 14, 2013, at 12:50 PM, Rolf wrote:
c) No one has been able to explain how the element WAY- (WAW)
changed the meaning of the form with WAY- to the very opposite of
the form without WAY.
d) Such a change of meaning to the very opposite because of a
prefixed conjunction is unprecedented in the languages of the world.
5) Because of 4 a), b), c) and d), there are no reasons to view the
WAYYIQTOL as different from the YIQTOL form as far as meaning is
concerned. So, just as infinitive absolute is the narrative form
in Phoenician, and the prefix form (YAQTUL(U) is the narrative
form in Ugaritic, the prefixform YIQTOL is the narrative form in
Classical Hebrew.
6) But how can the function and use of the WAY + YIQTOL be
explained? The simple explanation is that narrative texts express
sequences of actions in the past, one action following the other,
and the element that is driving the consecution is the conjunction
WAW. The Hebrew writers, more than writers in any language that I
know of, had a preference for this conjunction—"and this happened,
and then this happened, and then this happened...." The gemination
and stress pattern of the WAYYIQTOL form is based on the Phonetic
rules of the Masoretes and are nothing special. So the form can
morphologically speaking be reduced to a YIQTOL with the prefixed
conjunction WAW.
7) The real obstacle to accepting that the WAYYIQTOL as a YIQTOL,
is that YIQTOL is believed to code for future and present or for
the imperfective aspect, and how can such functions corroborate
past reference?
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