Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Peter,


I have the following comments:

>Dear Rolf,
>
>Let's look at two English sentences:
>
>1. This morning I read the newspaper.
>2. Every morning I read the newspaper.
>
>Here, to my mind, we have two different tenses or TAMs which happen to
>have acquired the same form by some historical accident - in this case
>they are actually pronounced differently (like "red" in 1 and "reed"
>in 2).
>
>Would you agree that the verb is a simple, perfective past tense in 1
>and some kind of present tense, imperfective and habitual in 2? Or
>would you claim that for this and a few other verbs (e.g. "let",
>"put") there is no simple past tense and no simple present tense
>(except in the 3rd person singular?!) but only one combined tense?

The best way to differentiate between semantic and pragmatic factors, is to
use a privative model. In the equipollent model we have similar opposites
(e.g. +/-stative, +/-durative etc). In the privative model we have just
+properties and there are no opposites.  This means that when a verb is
*marked*
+ property, say +durative or +past, this property can never be cancelled.
Unmarked properties may also in some contexts be durative or past or be
punctual or future, but the important point is that the +property is
uncancellable. The English verb 'read' is not marked for past tense and can
play different roles as you show, the verbs "went" and "thought" are on the
other hand marked for past tense.

In your examples above, 1. is simple past and 2. is present. In posts two
years ago I used to say that English does not have aspect at all, if what
we find in Greek and Hebrew is aspect. A Norwegian linguist advised me to
use "aspect" for all three systems and rather explain the difference.
However, aspect is not grammaticalized in English, not even the participle
is "aspect", but it can be used to express what is commonly known as the
"imperfective aspect". Habituality, as we find in 1. above is not even
aspect in the English sense of the word, but comes closer to Aktionsart.

>
>Similarly with Hebrew. Simple yiqtol and jussive have the same form in
>many cases, but they remain semantically distinct. True, one needs the
>context to disambiguate them (a strong argument for a discourse
>approach, in my opinion), but this does not mean that speakers thought
>of them as synonymous.

Non-indicative mood must in many cases in Hebrew be construed on the basis
of the context, but wayyiqtols must be, if they represent past tense and/or
the perfective aspect, be comprehended as marked as such (e.g. wayy is the
signal element). To use my privative model. Any form which is indifferent
toward +past can be used as non-past or past (e.g. about 5% of the yiqtols
have past meaning), but wayyiqtol, if it is marked for past tense can only
be past tense in any context! So your English examples excellently
illustrate the privative model, but do no contradict the principle that a
form which is marked for past tense is always past tense.

>
>Could it not be that the one form weqatal represents two originally
>quite distinct tenses or TAMs which have come together because of some
>phonological mechanism or Masoretic regularisation but retain distinct
>meanings?

Absolutely possible! And anyone having a hypothesis about this should try
to demonstrate its validity by the use of evidence. (Please tell me what
you mean by TAMs).
>
>Peter Kirk
>
Regerds
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo