[b-hebrew] tenses - Ex 3:14

Michael Abernathy mabernathy at isot.com
Sat Sep 17 19:05:15 EDT 2005


Vadim,
Do you realize that you have just defined the Hebrew future so that it 
includes the present?


Vadim Cherny wrote:

>>Tense describes the reference time from narrator's point of view.
>>
>>That is to say, future tense must refer to the future from the
>>narrator's
>>deictic centre, and past tense likewise.
>>
>>Now, narrator's deictic centre might be shifted, and so future tense
>>sometimes refers to the past events - from the point of view of the
>>reader
>>or of narrator's contemporaries. This is still future tense.
>>
>>Does that seem reasonable?
>>
>>
>>SB: Perfectly reasonable. And how many tenses do you recognize?
>>    
>>
>
>qatal - past
>weqatal - future. Note common role of waw as reversing device in
>qatal/weqatal and hiphil/hophal.
>q'tol - imperative
>yiqtol - late form of the future tense, derived from imperative
>wayiqtol - last form of the past tense, symmetrically modeled upon weqatal.
>Note its predominant usage to impute the sense of archaic narration.
>Hebrew doesn't have present tense, and rightly so: an action is either ended
>(thus past tense), or continues into the future (thus, FT).  The qotel form
>is late and is not really a verb.
>
>Vadim Cherny
>
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>



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