[b-hebrew] Vav consecutive Gen 1:3
furuli at online.no
furuli at online.no
Wed May 26 16:14:33 EDT 2004
Dear Peter,
Please read Comrie, perhaqps his comments can help you.
Best regards
Rolf
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
>On 26/05/2004 11:35, furuli at online.no wrote:
>
>>
>>Dear Geroge,
>>
>>By "preterite," do you mean "grqmmaticalized past tense," i.e. that
>>the WAYYIQTOL is uncancellable past tense in any context, ...
>
>
>Do such tenses exist in any language? Or is this merely a
>theoretical construct?
>
>>... just as English "went" and "walked"? ...
>
>
>These are not uncancellably past. In "If I walked down the road now,
>I would meet my neighbours in their garden", "walked" is not past,
>because its past meaning is cancelled by the conditional
>construction. The same is true in "When my friend comes tomorrow, he
>will complain that he walked a long way, but I did tell him I would
>pick up him up at the station", because the past meaning is
>cancelled by its subordination to a future verb. And most languages
>are more flexible than English, not less, in their use of verb
>tenses.
>
>>... If so, is it possible to differentiate between "past tense" and
>>"past reference," or are all verbs with past reference preterites?
>>...
>
>
>I would suggest that all verb forms which indicate past time when
>used in unmarked contexts are past tenses or preterites. But most if
>not all of these verb forms can also be used with non-past reference
>in marked constructions, for example as relative past within a
>future. The details vary from language to language.
>
>The exceptional cases of non-past WAYYIQTOL etc which you have
>listed are necessarily in marked constructions, because if there
>were not some kind of marking you would have no way of identifying
>them as non-past.
>
>--
>Peter Kirk
>peter at qaya.org (personal)
>peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
>http://www.qaya.org/
More information about the b-hebrew
mailing list