Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

this ties into Hebrew after a Greek survey
{rolf furuli wrote}
>Mari Broman Olsen, who follows the principles of P.H. Grice did such a
test
>with NT Greek, by a scrupulous differentiation between semantic an
>pragmatic factors.  Her conclusion regarding aorist, which for the most
>part is used with past meaning, is that it represents the perfective
aspect
>but is time indifferent. Her excellent methods have the advantage that
they
>are testable, and I follow a similar method in my study of Hebrew verbs.

i am sorry to hear an unqualified statement about olsen's conclusions and
methods. i suspect that one or the other isn't completely accurate, or else
the methods are not excellent.

by definition, or self-evidently, the greek aorist is PERFECTIVE. 
if someone wants to claim, though, 
that the greek aorist [say of the maccabean era] is 100% time indifferent,
that the greek aorist indicative is not the simple, perfective, PAST tense,

   then they are really wasting time. 

methodologies may be very rigorous and very scientific, and wrong. 
e.g., look at the "differentiation" criteria used in historical Jesus
research. if it is scientific to only use material for characterizing Jesus
that no one else ever said or used, then the resulting composite will
certainly be wrong and a caricature, but very rigorous and very scientific.


languages are human and may include inconsistencies. e.g. yaktub 'let him
write' is one kind of tense-aspect-mood [notice that this terminology does
not prejudice anything as far as it goes] but with [lam] yaktub "he wrote"
is quite different.

a better methodology for a language is to "map" situations [=semantic
reference, overlaid with pragmatic manipulation] with "how to say it". that
is how children get inside a system the world over. they don't even know
words like 'tense', 'aspect' or 'mood'. 'naming a particular animal' is
something that can be done later, after the fact.

what would happen if someone tried to describe a multi-dimensional reality
like length,width,depth and time with a two-dimensional framework, say
"yip" and "yap"? essentially, that is what goes on in languages of the
world with binary verb systems. they all "work",  but they all create
problems of definition. 

the point in the english example "we are dead" was that it is a present
perfective. grammatically it refers to something that has already happened
at the time of speaking. but it can be used in a threatening situation to
express extreme danger of dying in the FUTURE. we do not thereby conclude
that english has either no tense or no aspect. 
one example, or even twenty percent of examples do not 'disprove',
unfortunately for scientific method. 
they broaden the description. 
[what is worse is that this becomes logically circular. but that is exactly
what every human language is. one gets inside, learns to manipulate its
circularity. languages self-define.{of course, biblical hebrew doesn't even
have a name for its verbs. 'yip' and 'yap' would work, pa`al and yif`al or
qatal and yiqtol do fine.}] 

back to greek (NB that indicative is specified)
1.The Greek "imperfect" is a PAST IMPERFECTIVE
2.The Greek "aorist indicative" is a PAST PERFECTIVE
3.The Greek "future indicative" is basically FUTURE (PERFECTIVE)
4.The Greek "perfect indicative" is basically a PRESENT PERFECTIVE

The Hebrew prefix tense joins number 3 and 1 above, plus other functions. 
The Hebrew suffix tense  joins 2 and 4, plus other functions.
[i've left 'present' out because it easily leads to miscommunication. e.g.
'i write' is not present in english, but 'i am writing' is.]

[furthermore the semantic reference(s) of the suffix tense-aspect-mood are
congruent with the vav hahippux prefix.
the semantic reference(s) of the prefix tense-aspect-mood are congruent
with the plus vav hahipux suffix.
the participle is the default present and was already an accepted and
growing  innovation in David's day, to judge from our texts.]

the reality of the language is the binary mapping unto a multi-dimensional
reality. 
naming that reality is a bit of a problem because all the definitions
"leak" when examined carefully. that is why there is 'the endless thread'
in b-hebrew. 

this is unfortunate for the "outsider student" who would demand to learn
the language through an exotic english definition that doesn't exist. but
it does provide work for linguists.

children, situations and mapping  are much, much preferred and relatively
stressless for learning. 
the only 'problem' is that the language is seen to communicate and feels
'normal' within itself. 

braxot 
randall buth