Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Moon-Ryul Jung" <moon AT saint.soongsil.ac.kr>]

Dear Rolf, 
thank you for your kind answers to my questions.
On 04/25/99, "Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>" wrote:

> ..... 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.

Could you explain it a bit more?

> >[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).
> >

Can this hypothesis explain the quite convincing observation that
wayyiqtol is a main-line  driver of the narrative, while x-qatal provides
background information?


> >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)?

Is this what you are claiming: 
"past events which are  with imperfective aspect ARE terminated 
 at the point when the reporter focussed upon them (the RT)"?

Cheers!

Moon-Ryul Jung
Assistant Professor
Dept of Computer Science
Soongsil University
Seoul, Korea