[b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs
Rolf Furuli
furuli at online.no
Wed Jul 8 03:34:19 EDT 2009
Dear Yitzhak,
As a description for my students I can say with reference to a
particular text: This text is narrative. Yet the text may contain
verbs in succession with past reference, direct speech and other
forms of speech.
When I speak of "narrative" where verbs per definition have past
reference, I speak of texts where each verb follow another verb in
consecution without breaks.
We are now deviating from the central issue, and I see no reason to continue.
Best regards,
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
>On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Rolf Furuli wrote:
>> Dear Yitzhak,
>>
>> Communication is not always easy, and either I have not expressed my
>> points clearly enough, or you have misunderstood something.
>>
>> The points I tried to convey were:
>>
>> 1. Verbs in real narratives must per definition have past reference
>> (not past tense). David Crystal (2001) "Dictionary of Linguistics and
>> Phonetics" has the following definition: "A narrative is seen as a
>> recapitulation of past experience in which language is used to
>> structure a sequence of (real of fictitious ) events". So Crystal
>> agrees that narrative verbs have past reference.
>
>Dear Rolf,
>
>While I accept Crystal's definition, I think one has to separate between
>past experience and past reference. David Crystal himself knows
>about "past reference" but he does not use the term here. Therefore,
>it is inaccurate to attribute to Crystal agreement that the narrative
>has past reference. Also, in the sentence you quote above, verbs are
>not discussed at all. So it is also inaccurate to attribute to the verbs
>past reference.
>
>Specifically, Comrie explicitly says (Tense, on p. 62-63 that I provided
>in the earlier message) that a narrative may make use of relative
>present time reference: "...[We] have claimed that the meaning of
>of the English present participle is relative present time reference ...
>thus the present participle in narrative sequence is interpreted as
>simultaneous with the current reference point defined by the next
>verb/event in the narrative sequence."
>
>> 2. There may be properties of the narrative sequence itself that can
>> not be ascribed to the verbs. The consequence of this is that while a
>> narrative verb has past reference, it need not have an intrinsic past
>> tense.
>
>Comrie could have taken the easy way out and said that because
>the present participle is used here in a narrative, we cannot tell its
>meaning and we must look for other examples. But he did not. He
>evidently believes the meaning can be discerned even though we
>have a narrative before us. Anyway, Comrie does not say that a
>narrative verb has past reference, but rather that a narrative verb
>may have non-past reference.
>
>> No one would for example say that the infinitive absolutes
>> that are the narrative verbs in Phoenician have an intrinsic past
>> tense. I would say that in BH it is basically the prefixed
>> conjunction WAW to the prefix verbs that signal the past reference
>> and not the verb form itself; "She did that, and she did that, and
>> she did that.
>
>> Both points above accords with Comrie's views.
>
>I don't see that. Comrie says that normally non-past reference verbs
>maintain their time reference even in narratives. You seem to suggest
>that somehow they must gain past reference because they are in
>narratives.
>
>The link from before:
>http://books.google.com/books?id=KmFMW40zyFcC&pg=PA62&dq=crossing
>
>>>So in the following:
>>>> Comrie does not discuss WAYYIQTOL but the relative time reference in
>>>> narrative. But an important point is that he shows that a verb form
>>>> may be given a particular meaning in a narrative. But this meaning
>>>> need not be an intrinsic part of the verb form but rather an
>>>> implicature from the narrative itself (the context), Comrie's words
>>>> in an excellent way illustrate my distinction between semantics and
>>>> pragmatics. And they also imply that the verb forms used in narrative
> >>> contexts can have different meanings. For example, any verb form used
>>> > in narratives *must* per definition have past reference.
>
>Again, Comrie does not say that any verb form in narratives "*must*"
>per definition have past reference. I don't know where you are getting
>this because Comrie seems to say quite the opposite.
>
>>>The above, specifically the last two sentences, appears to misread into
>>>Comrie the exact position that he argues against -- that verb tenses in
>>>narrative receive a different tense due to their use in a narrative context.
>>
>> No you are wrong
>
>Could you elaborate? Could you give an example of where Comrie does
>say a verb must have past reference if it is used in narrative? Why does
>Comrie go to this whole explanation of justifying his belief in a pure
>relative present reference of the participle in a narrative context if he
>thinks that the verb has past reference in a narrative context regardless
>of its intrinsic verb form?
>
>>>So while many linguists probably would agree with Comrie, I doubt most
>>>linguists would accept that an imperfective verb form can be used in
>>>narrative contexts. In any case, without a cross-linguistic analysis like
>>>Comrie's, and without having examples of the use of imperfective
>>>aspects in narrative contexts in living languages which have perfective/
>>>imperfective distinctions, it is very hard to see how an argument could
>>>be made for Biblical Hebrew to have such uses.
>>
>> The arguments above are very dangerous linguistically speaking. Each
>> language must be analyzed in its own right, and it is fallacious to
>> analyze dead languages in the light of living ones. There are more
>> than 20 different analyses of perfective and imperfective aspects, so
>> which one should we choose?
>
>Actually, I think it is fallacious and dangerous to do otherwise. You can
>suggest particular meanings for Hebrew verb forms but without native
>speakers you have no way to know if that is indeed what they intend.
>If a certain use of the verb in a hypothetical unattested case is acceptable
>or not. At least, if you have a cross linguistic comparison from another
>living language you can go ahead and show that it is possible to have
>had such an interpretation. Knowing that something is possible but not
>knowing if it is right is slightly better than not knowing whether it is
>possible or right. Furthermore, if there are no cross linguistic
>comparisons with living languages you have essentially a large ad-hoc
>assumption regarding Hebrew. It is all very unsound.
>
>> As for a cross-linguistic analysis, we have exactly the same
>> phenomena in Aramaic, Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Akkadian as in
>> Hebrew, the same verb form can be used with past, present, and future
>> meaning.
>
>And if you have such widespread attestation, it is all the more important
>to show these phenomena in Arabic, Neo-Aramaic and Ethiopic. Otherwise,
>it suggests that you are reading into the dead languages things that are
>not there -- that whereas in the living languages speakers exist to tell
>you when you're wrong, in the dead languages, without speakers, there
>is simply no one alive to tell you you're wrong.
>
>I note that some of the same concepts were raised by Peter Kirk 10 years
>ago:
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/1999-October/004532.html
>
>I am retracting my issue with the use of imperfective in narrative. But I
>see no place where Comrie suggests that verbs lose their tense/aspect
>in a narrative. Everything I read in Comrie goes against this assertion.
>
>Yitzhak Sapir
>_______________________________________________
>b-hebrew mailing list
>b-hebrew at lists.ibiblio.org
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
More information about the b-hebrew
mailing list