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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] BH verbal system
  • Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 09:24:18 +0100

Dear Randall,

RF: I see no reason why I should predict anything at all. As I said in my last post, I deal with what I see (or think I see) and not with what I expect to see. At the same time I am aware of the Problem of Induction. If you over several years have travelled around looking at swans, and you have observed hundreds of thousands of white swans, you have not proven that all swans are white. But one or two black swans would falsify the theory that all swans are white.

Fifty-two examples of verbs+adverbs tell us very little about temporal reference and tense. In a language we also find what we may call "linguistic conventions": Particular forms are normally used in particular ways-but they may also be used in different ways. Examples of linguistic conventions are the use of the conjunction WAW+YYQTOL (WAYYIQTOL) in Classical Hebrew narrative, the use of the infinitive absolute in Phoenician narrative, and the use of YAQTUL in Ugaritic both in narrative and in future contexts. Because I have found a reasonable number of WAYYIQTOLs with non-past reference, and a reasonable of BH QATALs with non-past reference, I claim that I have falsified the claim that both forms are grammaticalized past.




>The characteristics of a language that lacks tense, is that all its
finite verb forms in normal clauses (not hypothetical clauses) can be
used for past, present, and future. This is true in Classical Hebrew,
but not in Classical Greek, English, and Norwegian.>

yet it remains enigmatic that BH theories that say that
"adverbs mark time, verbs are used irrespective of the time divisions"
the following is not predicted:

vayyiqtol is never used in clauses with maHar 'tomorrow'
nor does one ever find ... maHar QATAL

but one does find veQATAL maHar
ve Sub Qotel maHar
and ... yiqtol maHar.

Rolf may predict that if we had more than 52 occurrences of this in BH
we would find examples.
We might, but I doubt it.
I note that 52 out of 52 seem to show that the verb has a component
in it that correlates with time when it is not called on to do something else,
and when the clause specifies 'tomorrow' it is not being called on for
something else.
(But I don't think of the BH verb as purely 'time' or 'aspect' or
'mood', they may
point to any of the three. This is the kind of thing that one sees in minimally
differentiated languages with two-way verbal morphology as Derek Bickerton
has noted in studying creoles.)

RF: As long as you have not given a clear and specific definition of what you mean by tense and aspect, it is impossible to understand what you are speaking about. For example, do you differentiate between temporal reference and tense? How do you define aspect, and what is the differences between the imperfective and the perfective aspect


Randall Buth


--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
_______________________________________________
Best regards,


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo






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