Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryan Rocine" <596547 AT ican.net>]

boqer tov, Irene,

 i'm a preacher, and i teach BH(part time), and i'm quite interested in the
development of teaching materials for teaching BH.  from my perspective, i
*should* be able to answer your questions convincingly.  <sweat beads
forming>  here goes.  

first, re: the meanings of individual verb forms:  native speakers know
what their verb forms mean, albeit intuitively most of the time.  what's
more important though is that they know *when to use them to get certain
things done* like express sequence,  simultanaity, anteriority,
habituality, emphasis, respect, etc.  we might, for pleasure's or
asthetics' sake want to allow these understandings to develop naturally and
intuitively for the student of BH, but you know what?  we're dreamin'! 
ain't gonna happen.  we can't "immerse" in a finite corpus of Semitic,
written-only texts to the degree and in the manner necessary to condition
our way to this knowledge.  **besides which, we wouldn't want to if we
could!**  do any of us study Semitic texts for pleasure' sake only?  we
study them in conjunction with some other scholarly pursuit whether
historical, archeological, anthropological, linguistic, literary, or
religious in which precision is greatly valued.   although we may want an
intuitive type of feel for the Semitic languages so we can better enjoy our
business(a sort of "frosting on the cake"), intuitive knowledge is
*unsatisfactory* for our "business" pursuits. we *need* the plodding,
painstaking accuracy of scientific analysis so that our learning of BH can
be a useful tool for us in the business pursuits for which we began
learning BH in the first place.  why should we keep apologizing that
learning BH requires detailed morpho-syntactical analysis?  it's part of
our job descriptions.  hey...didn't the Lord say, "...by the sweat of your
brow..."?  (now a little of the preacher is coming out)  why should we
apologize if learning BH is not altogether "touchy-feely", fun,
pleasurable?  do we have to pander to the popular lust for
self-gratification?  opposition to all things inconvenient?  i think my
first year grammar of BH is a ton of fun, but no mistake about it: it's a
lot of work, too.  so????!!!!

second, re: the *system* of verb forms of BH:  a system is more efficient
to learn than facts in isolation.

third, re: research.  a lot of my students are "bottom-line" people.  they
don't want to know all the theory and research and terminolgy and
philosophy that is behind determin9ing the meanings of the verb forms: they
just want to know what the forms mean.  that may be o.k. for them; depends
on the reason they are learning BH.  but not for me.  remember that
accuracy is the name of the game.  we're learning this languagew as a tool
for our "business" pursuits and our understanding of BH is only as reliable
as the research foundation on which it rests.  in fact, many of us have
made a business of developing the foundation.  for instance, according to
the research of the last ten-fifteen years, the vav-conversive theory is
dead.  we may not like that, especially if we struggled and sweat to learn
BH "the vav-conversive way," but that's too bad.  another example:  i like
discourse analysis, but linguists want to make the d.a. models
linguistically accontable.  personally, it makes a lot of work for me, but
i'm glad.  this is a business.  it's work, but accurancy is the name of the
game.

how'd i do?

Shalom,
Bryan

B. M. Rocine
Associate Pastor
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13208

315-437-6744(w)
315-479-8267(h)

----------
> From: Irene Riegner <iriegner AT concentric.net>
> To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
> Subject: RE: Tense and Aspect --- formerly b-Hebrew digest
> Date: Saturday, December 05, 1998 1:10 AM
> 
>  Matthew Anstey wrote:
> 
> >.....From reading these books, and speaking to people at SBL, and the
> recent posts, I am getting more confused than ever about whether the BH
> verb system is tense or aspect or both.....
> >
> >
> 
> Does it matter?  Why does it matter?
> 
> irene
> 
> 
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