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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs
  • Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2009 10:49:09 +0200


Dear Stephen,

Please see below.


Dear Rolf,

You haven't understood my question. I know you don't believe WAYYIQTOL is ever past tense, and I believe I understand the terms we are working with here. I'll try to rephrase both my question(s) and my example.

Actually, I'll start with the example. Obviously, the English (so-called) past indicative form (went / thought / swam / walked) is usually a tense (past grammaticalization of location in time), so a name like "simple past" or "past indicative" fits. But what I am trying to show is that in some cases, this form is NOT a tense, but rather a mood (subjunctive). The following conversation may illustrate this better:

A: I'm going to drive to work.
B: If you walked, you would be helping the environment.

For "walked", the deictic centre is the present moment, and the reference time is future - though strictly speaking, it's a future moment in one of several possible "worlds" or mental spaces (one which seems not very likely).

RF:

In B. Comrie (1985) "Tense" p. 9, we find the definition of tense as "grammaticalized location in time". On pp. 18-19 Comrie discusses examples of the use of past tense that seemingly contradicts the view that in past tense reference time comes before the deictic center. He mentions counterfactuals and polite expressions. But as Comrie said, and we all know, there can be special uses of grammatical categories. But that does not invalidate the fact that tenses exist, and that they are expressed by particular forms. The reason why 1) and 2) do not make sense is the existence of tenses, and the reason why 3) is ungrammatical is the existence of aspects.

1) #Matt ran as I am speaking.

2) #Matt ran tomorrow.

3) #Matt has run last week.


The fact that tenses may have special uses is of course a complicating factor in the analysis of a dead language.

People who are native speakers know their mother tongue, and intelligent communication can be performed. Please look at 4) below. On the basis of a knowledge of the meaning of the imperfective aspect, and because subject and object are singular, a native speaker would take the clause to mean that Rita was on the point of reaching the peak (A person who did not fully know the nature of the participle would perhaps give it a different interpretation.)

4) Rita was reaching the peak.

I use this example in order to show that to understand the subtleties of a language, we must have an accurate understanding of all its different parts. And that is the problem with a dead language, because we can only get an understanding of its different parts on the basis of induction, and induction is not always reliable.

I started my study of the BH verb with the assumption that a difference in morphology suggests a difference in meaning: The participles has a meaning different from the infinitives, and the prefix forms have a meaning different from the suffix forms. My first test of the verbal system was for tense, and it consisted of finding whether one or more of the verb forms had a uniform temporal reference. (I would like to stress that in my view there are some parts of any language that represent semantic meaning that do not change, but by far, most of the parts of a language are pragmatic; meaning and communication are dependent on the context.) A test should not only be quantitative but be qualitative as well. So my test for tense did not only consist in counting examples. The first step was to look for an unfinished grammaticalization process. If such a process could be shown, a particular form could have one meaning in an old text and another meaning in a younger text. My conclusion was that no such process was discernible, so the basic assumption that forms with the same morphology have the same meaning, could be upheld.

The only candidate for tense was the WAYYIQTOL form, because I found that 93.1% of the cases had past reference. Two possibilities had to be assessed: The 997 forms with non-past reference could be exceptions, as Comrie has shown exist in all languages, or they could represent real evidence against WAYYIQTOL being past tense. Several factors were considered in order to answer these questions, such as: Could verb meaning be different in prose and poetry? Would a diachronic mapping of the forms show a pattern that could illuminate their use? In both cases the answer was No. And because the forms could not be viewed as special cases, the conclusion was that their existence falsified any view that WAYYIQTOL was past tense.




Anyway, the point is that the form which grammaticalizes "past" in the majority of constructions/contexts does NOT do so in this type of construction (and others): in this construction it is a subjunctive verb, often with future reference. However, this more rare modal use does not automatically disprove that, most of the time, the form is indeed a past tense.

Hence my conclusions: (1) the presence or absence of tense (grammaticalized time) is not inextricably tied to a particular verb form; that is, one form can have two mutually exclusive TAM functions, and (2) the "semantic value" of a verb form must take into account wider contextual considerations (or better, wider constructional considerations).

RF:

I disagree with both (1) and (2). The very definition of tense as "grammaticalization of location in time" excludes the view that tense is pragmatic. One way a grammaticalization process proceeds is that a word form looses meanings or uses and becomes more and more specialized, until it has only one meaning and is fully grammaticalized. Special uses of the form can occur, but do not contradict its grammaticalization.

I suggest the following test: Start with a group of ten person and expand it to one thousand persons. Show them the word "walked" and "went" without a context. and ask for an analysis. I am quite certain that all the native speakers would say that both are past tense. A context is not needed for such a conclusion.



My question, then, relates to the assumptions in your methodology. Do you assume, in your analysis, that a given verbal form (in this case, WAYYIQTOL) must always have the same core TAM function/meaning? Or do you consider the possibility that its "meaning" could be different in different grammatical contexts, just like the -ed form in English? For instance, Waltke and O'Connor's analysis of YIQTOL has it as sometimes imperfective and sometimes modal.


Actually, I'd like to broaden the question and open it to anybody, because even if I'm raising a valid methodological point, it may have no practical relevance here. Is there any value in posing this question with respect to WAYYIQTOL? Is anyone aware of studies which have considered the possibility? And if the answer is "no value", I humbly bow out.


RF:

Your question, as I now understand you, does have value and is relevant. The assumption I started with that there must be a difference in meaning between the suffix forms and prefix forms, is general, and does not say anything regarding the nature of these meanings. The advantage of using the fundamental parameters deictic center, event time, and reference time, is that no assumption regarding tense, mood, or aspect at the outset is necessary. Having found that the prefix forms (WAYYIQTOL, WEYIQTOL, and YIQTOL) have the same meaning ( imperfective meaning), and that the suffix forms (QATAL and WEQATAL) also have the same meaning ( perfective meaning), I will expect that the forms behave as the imperfective and perfective aspects respectively. But I will not expect that they always have the same modality or temporal reference.



Best regards,
Stephen Shead
Centro de Estudios Pastorales
Santiago, Chile


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo





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