Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

Dear Rolf,

Yes, I admit to little familiarity with the literature on aspect. But 
what I am trying to pick up about this is leaving me very confused. It 
seems that even those who are familiar with the literature are far 
from clear on how they understand the concept of aspect and how it 
relates to Hebrew. And I am still not sure if this is a debate about 
the meaning of technical terms or about any real substance concerning 
the Hebrew language.

Let me rephrase my point. What we see in Hebrew texts is verb forms, 
not aspects. We cannot point to a word and say "this is such-and-such 
aspect" without going first through some theory (and I am not sure we 
can do it even then). Broman Olsen has a definition of aspect; others 
have other definitions; others simply follow the definitions in 
another language (not necessarily their mother tongue - I tend to 
relate questions of aspect with Russian). But there seems to be no 
agreement on how Hebrew verb forms correspond with anyone's definition 
of aspect, indeed this is the very point of contention. So when you 
asked e.g.

     "What is the relationship between Hebrew aspects and time? Does 
     the perfective aspect uniformely signal that the end was reached 
     at RT and the imperfective aspect uniformely signal that it was 
     not reached? And if not, what relation has the end of an event to 
     each aspect?"

you were presupposing some particular mapping of Hebrew verb forms on 
to aspects (either imperfective or perfective). I am not sure if you 
were expecting answers relating to your own mappings or to Bryan's 
(tentative) quite different ones. I would be happier to try to answer 
the following question:

     "What is the relationship between Hebrew verb paradigms and time? 
     Do certain paradigms uniformly signal that the end was reached at 
     RT and other paradigms uniformly signal that it was not reached? 
     And if not, what relation has the end of an event to each 
     paradigm?"

That way we are not presupposing an answer in advance. We cannot be 
sure that there is any consistent aspectual nature to Hebrew verb 
forms until we can describe this nature, and we have not yet been able 
to do that. So I am just agreeing with Paul's excellent posting, 
especially when he wrote: "Aspect per se does not appear to be solely 
determined on the word-level in this language." I hope that helps you 
to understand my point.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[2]: Jos 14-21 (was die Flucht ins Prasens (was Ruth))
Author:  furuli AT online.no at internet
Date:    24/05/1999 17:35


Peter Kirk wrote:



>Dear Rolf,
>
>You wrote to Bryan,
>
>"...Do you claim that events in Hebrew expressed by the perfective 
>aspect *allways* are terminated and events expressed by the 
>imperfective aspect always are continuing at reference time?  If the 
>answer is yes, Hebrew aspect is similar to English aspect as far as 
>time is concerned, if the answer is no, Hebrew aspect is different 
>from English aspect in this respect. Yes, it may possibly mean that 
>Hebrew aspect is not concerned with time at all, as I claim."
>
>May I ask what you mean here by "Hebrew aspect" and "English aspect"? 
>It seems to me as if you are here using it to mean "different 
>Hebrew/English verb paradigms". But earlier in the same posting you 
>were discussing aspect as a general linguistic concept rather than as 
>one tied to specific languages. I fear that you are further clouding 
>already muddy waters by using the word "aspect" in such a range of 
>different ways. The question you raise in this paragraph would be 
>better described as the question of how far the distinctions between 
>Hebrew verb paradigms correspond to the distinctions between English 
>verb paradigms.
>
>Since the debate about the meaning of the term "aspect" is hardly 
>relevant to this forum, can I suggest that both you and Bryan try to 
>rephrase your arguments without using this term (or "perfective" and 
>"imperfective"). After all, it hardly helps clarity of your argument 
>to use terms which (as you claim) do not have a single generally 
>agreed definition.
>
>Peter Kirk


Dear Peter,

I am sorry but I do not understand the meaning of your post.  My questions 
were related to one of the most fundamental sides (and perhaps the most 
neglected one) of the aspect case, namely, whether or not Hebrew aspects 
have a relationship with or in any way represent time. This is highly 
appropriate for b-hebrew.  I did not suggest a general linguistic 
discussion of aspect but only a language-specific one, namely a comparison 
of English and Hebrew aspect.  That this is justified, is seen by the fact 
that English-speaking students almost automatically starts to compare the 
Hebrew verbal system with the system of their mother tongue.

Aspect is an important term in all modern Hebrew grammars, and this is of 
course also the case with "perfective" and "imperfective". To suggest that 
we should avoid these terms on b-hebrew does not make sense to me.  To say 
that a comparison of aspects simply is a comparison of verb paradigms 
betrays little familiarity with the aspect literature. An important reason 
for misunderstandings when things are discussed, is that terms are used 
differently, so it is important for all of us to define our terms. I 
therefore suggest that Bryan answer the questions I asked.


Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo



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