The Wayyiqtol as 'Pluperfect': When and Why

What it is about

Normally a wayyiqtol moves the story forward, and a pluperfect ("had done") is said with a qatal after a fronted element. Collins asks whether a wayyiqtol alone, with no preceding qatal, can mean a pluperfect. He surveys Driver (who allowed it only at the start of a section), Waltke–O'Connor, Martin, Baker and Buth's "unmarked temporal overlay", and concludes that it can, when at least one of three conditions holds: (1) an anaphoric expression points back to an event already told; (2) the logic of the referents requires the event to precede the previous one; (3) the verb opens a section or paragraph. Applied to two disputed verses, the reading is rejected for 1 Sam 14:24 and accepted for Gen 2:19 (the animals "had been formed").

Ideas

• I1. A "wayyiqtol overlay" flag in the event reader: when a wayyiqtol repeats the lexeme of an earlier event in the same episode (condition 1), do not order it after the preceding event; mark the relation as overlay instead of next.
• I2. Condition 3 as a rule: a wayyiqtol directly after a paragraph mark or a וַיְהִי + time phrase does not inherit the "after the previous clause" relation.
• I3. Collect the candidate verses Collins and Driver list (in the Torah, among others: Gen 2:2, 2:8, 2:19, 12:1, 26:18; Exod 4:19, 11:1, 18:2, 33:5; Lev 9:22; Num 1:47–49) as a small gold set for the event-order rule, with Collins's verdicts.
• I4. Record in the grammar that the overlay reading is a licensed exception and say which condition licenses it in each listed verse.

For Mova

I1–I2 apply to the event chain built from the trees (the world reading of the Torah, and the wayyiqtol mainline in 09-discourse.md §1). I3 is a test set; I4 goes into The verb under wayyiqtol.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.53751/001c.30401

@article{collins1995wayyiqtol,
  title = {{The Wayyiqtol as 'Pluperfect': When and Why}},
  author = {Collins, C. John},
  journal = {Tyndale Bulletin},
  year = {1995},
  doi = {10.53751/001c.30401},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.53751/001c.30401}
}

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