Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: An odd question - good question!

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: An odd question - good question!
  • Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 01:43:51 -0700


>
> >>Not sure if I should even ask this...has anybody ever heard of a
> >>theory that Hebrew has no verbs at all?
>
> Not such an odd question. We often take the grammatical categories of our
> own language and attempt to impose them on other languages. Many
> languages don't have "definitie articles" as we have in English and
> Hebrew.
>
> The English forms "I ate, I have eaten, I was eating" are also not
> paralleled in other languages.
>
> So we need to examine our assumption that our categories automatically
> fit onto other languages.

True, but this suggestion was that there are *no* verbs at all. I
couldn't help wondering: if that's the case, why has so much been
written about the Hebrew Verbal System, including the lead article
in the current "Hebrew Studies"?!?!?!?! I suspect that the person
who made this statement misunderstood something that was said,
probably a long time ago, WRT Hebrew verbless clauses. I'm
following up on it from that angle, but I wanted to know if anybody
had heard any such theory ever propounded.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page