Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Moon,

MY ANSWER: There are at least three basic problems in the study of dead
languages:
(1) We cannot start as did  Rene Descartes by saying "Cogito ergo sum", but
we have to make some assumptions. The question is how sound these
assumptions are?
(2) Because we have no informants there is an acute problem of circularity
in the interpretations.
(3) Because we have to find meaning by help of function, these two
properties are easily confused.

(1.1) My basic assumptions are: (a) There is nothing mystic with Hebrew,
but it can be studied the same way as other languages. (b) Different
morphosyntactic forms have different meanings, and an explanation of the
meaning of one particular form must account for *all* the uses of this form
in the whole corpus, not only in narratives. (c) The three basic properties
of the languages of the world are tense, mood, and aspect. Yiqtol and qatal
can signal past, present and future, so they can not be tenses. Mood is
signalled by the apocopation of yiqtols and in a small degree by qatals, in
addition to pragmatic means. Thus neither yiqtols nor qatals are moods.
Therefore both "must" be aspects, and the use suggests that yiqtol
represents the imperfective and qatal the perfective aspect.


>Dear Rolf,
>I always enjoy reading your post, especially because you use "language of
>modern linguistics" which I am familiar with.  You once wrote about your
>distinction between objective aspect and subjective aspect, which I did not
>quite
>understand. Now you brought the subject again. This time the presentation
>is
>clearer. Let me try to understand it. Let me quote some  important
>paragraphs
>you wrote.  (the expressions within bracket [..] are added by me)
>
>
>[Rolf]
>The most important point is whether aspect is an expression of
>*the internal time* of an event or not. In Broman Olsen's model tense is
>an
>expression of deictic time and aspect is an expression of internal,
>non-deictic time (Comrie agrees). This gives aspect
>(in English) an objective meaning; i.e. the interpretation of the
>different
>combinations of tense and aspect gives a uniform interpretation of the
>event (deictic time and internal time).
>
>To define [Hebrew] aspect I must take into account that it is a
>subjective viewpoint of the reporter and is not concerned with internal
>time, that most (but not all) imperfective verbs intersect ET either at
>the
>beginning or at the nucleus, and that most (but not all) perfective verbs
>either intersect ET at the coda or include the whole event with details
>not
>visible.
>
>[Moon]
>According to the above statement, Hebrew aspect would have been concerned
>with
>internal time and thereby would have been "objective aspect",
>if  the RT of  ALL  imperfective verbs intersect ET either at the
>beginning
>or at the necleus, and the RT of ALL perfective verbs either intersect ET
>at the code or
>include  the whole event with details not visible.
>
>But, this is not the case, as shown by the following observation.
>
>[Rolf]
> (1) yiqtol and wayyiqtol [can] intersect the event [have the RT]
>     *before* ET (conative situations).
> (2) yiqtol, wayyiqtol, qatal and weqatal intersects ET at the nucleus or
>at the
>      beginning of ET.
> (3) Yiqtol, wayyiqtol, qatal, and weqatal intersect
>      the event/state *after* ET (This is particularly seen in Piel
>because
>      it is resultative and factitive).
>
>[Moon]
> (2)  indicates that both imperfective verb forms and perfective verb forms
>have the RT
>       at the nucleus or at the beginning, that is, they are
>[+imperfective]
>       to use Oslen's terminology..
> (3)  indicates that both imperfective and perfective verb forms have the
>RT
>       after the ET (I understand it as "at the coda of the ET"),  that is,
>they
>       are [+perfective].
>
>
>(2) means that  the relationship between the RT and the ET indicated
> by [+imperfective] aspect can  occur both in imperfective verbs and
>perfective verbs.
>Similarly  with respect to (3). All this means that Hebrew aspect has
>nothing to
>do with the (objective) relationship between the RT and the ET,
>or the internal time, indicated by Olsen's  [+imperfective] and
>[+perfective] distinction.  Is this interpretation right?

MY ANSWER: Your interpretation is correct. To help others who find the
linguistic discussion problematic I would like to add:
(1) If my observations (1), (2), and (3) above are correct, it is only in
the *objective* sense of the English aspects that all the four Hebrew
conjugations are (+perfective) and (+imperfective). If we take away the
objective element /that (+imperfective) semantically signals that ET
continues after RT and that (+perfective) signals that ET is terminated at
RT/, then I find that yiqtol and wayyiqtol are imperfective and qatal and
weqatal are perfective.
(1) When we find situations where RT intersects ET *after* the end of an
event, and this occurs with all four conjugations, there is/may still be a
difference. When an imperfective event reaches its end and a state follows,
the state may be viewed as open; i.e. the end of the state is not reached.
When a perfective event reaches its end and a state follows, the end of the
state may be included.
This can be illustrated with the ZHE- and GUO-"aspects" in Chinese (Mandarin)

Resultative (open) imperfective:

In English : "Mary is lying on the bed." (She laid down and is still lying
there.)
In Mandarin:  "Mary zai chuang shang tang-zhe." ("Mary is lying on the
bed." The ZHE-element shows that the situation still holds.)

Resultative (closed) perfective:
In Mandarin:" Mary chang-ge yue qu-guo Xiang Gang." ("Mary went to Hong
Kong last month." Mary reached the end of the event of going to Hong Kong
and the resulting state of her being there resulted. The GUO-element
indicates that she is no longer in Hong Kong on the same trip, but the
resulting state has terminated.
(I am still in my first stages of the work with the Piel-stem.)
>
>If so,  I like this explanation. It reveals that
>Hebrew aspect is really different from aspect found in English and similar
>languages.
>But it depends on how much correct the observation you referred to. It
>depends on how
>you interpret the text, which is in turn influenced by your theory. (Is
>there any way to
>break this circular reasoning?)

MY ANSWER: Your observations are correct. You need to review my
observations/data to see how strong they are. Interpretation is always
strongly involved. The best way to reduce circularity is scrupulously to
differentiate between semantic meaning and conversational pragmatic
implicature. This is why I use Broman Olsen's excellent model.
>
>About observation  (1), is it so "strange" when imperfective forms are
>used
>to denote conative situations?  We seem to have such cases in English and
>in Greek.
>The fact that wayyiqtol forms are used that way raises a question. Do you
>have examples?

MY ANSWER: It is not strange. One test of my model relates to conative
situations. The prediction is: Only yiqtol and wayyiqtol can be used to
express conative situations and not qatal and weqatal. But such situations
are rare. When you get my mag.art thesis you will find several examples of
conative wayyiqtols.
Another test of my viewpoints is concerned with the different use/meaning
of wayyiqtols and qatals in the about 100 clauses with the words "until
this day" in the Bible
>
>
>
>[Rolf]
>The most narrow generalization I can make on the basis of these
>points is:
>
>"The imperfective aspect is a closeup view of a small part of an event or
>state with visible details, and the perfective aspect is a broader view
>from some distance with no visible details (The end of the event is not
>included in the definition but has indirectyly some importance).
>
>If we can show that the Hebrew conjugations do not represent tense, the
>alternative seems to be that they represent aspect. However, because of
>the
>seemingly haphazard use of the conjugations in non-narrative texts, we are
>allowed to post the following question: Is it possible to think of aspects
>that do not represent internal time? In other words, can we retain the
>view
>that aspects represent different viewpoints, and that the end is
>important,
>while we discard the notion that the aspects represent internal time in an
>objective way?
>
>To put the question in a practical fashion: Must we conclude
>that past events which are portrayed with the imperfective aspect were not
>terminated at the point when the reporter focussed upon them (the RT)?
>
>[Moon] Is there a typo here? Shouldn't "not" be omitted here?

MY ANSWER: There is no typo. The point is that if for example  bnh is used
in a past context as a yiqtol, an objective interpretation (as in the case
of the English aspects) would require that the building was not finished at
the time of writing (if C is the time of writing). Provided that yiqtol is
imperfective an objective interpretation  of yld in Job 3:3 would require
that Job was never born.
>
>These questions are crucial, and I think they all can be answered in the
>affirmative. The disticntion subjective/objective, therefore, has to do
>with whether or not aspect represents internal time, not whether aspect is
>semantic or pragmatic!
>
>[Moon]
>Do you mean that in English aspect is  semantic and objective, and
>in Hebrew aspect is semantic and subjective?
> All linguistic features are divided into "semantic" and
>"pragmatic". (Semantic features cannot be canceled by context, while
>pragmatic
> features can.) So aspect should be either semantic or pragmatic.

MY ANSWER: I am working with the best use of terminology regarding Hebrew
aspect. Because aspect is expressed by different morphosyntactic forms, the
prefix-form and the suffix-form respectedly, I would say that aspect in
Hebrew is semantic. However, I hasten to add that this conclusion entails
some difficulty, because viewpoints which lack a uniform temporal
interpretation, either related to a deictic point or to the beginning and
end of an event or state, are more difficult to define. And a clear
definition is a requirement for pinpointing semantic meaning. I think this
can be overcome, because the end of a situation is more important than it
seems to be, so I will come back to this.
>
>Incidentally, in English feature [+perfective] may be represented by
>perfect verb forms
>or simple past verb forms depending on context. So feature [+perfective]
>should be
>pragmatic. But I have the impression you think in English feature
>[+perfective]
>is semantic. Is it so?

MYANSWER According to Broman Olsen only English perfect represents the
perfective aspect and not imperfect. You ought to read her book.
>

Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo