Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Comrie and relative tenses in Arabic and Hebrew

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: peter_kirk AT sil.org
  • To: <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Comrie and relative tenses in Arabic and Hebrew
  • Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 20:19:14 -0400


Dear Rolf and other b-Hebrewers,

Let me make a further response to the following as I have now had the
chance to look a little at Comrie's book "Tense" (Cambridge University
Press 1985) myself.

Comrie makes a distinction between "Pure relative tense" (pp.56-64)
and "Absolute-relative tense" (pp.64-82). In his analysis, with which
I agree, finite verbs in English have absolute-relative tense forms
such as the pluperfect or past perfect. This is I think generally the
case with Indo-European languages (although Russian has only absolute
tenses). Comrie defines these as tenses whose "meaning combines
absolute time location of a reference point with relative time
location of a situation" (p.65).

Comrie distinguishes these from pure relative tense, "where the
reference point for location of a situation is given by the context,
not necessarily the present moment" (p.56). Comrie writes that
"English non-finite verb forms characteristically have relative time
reference" (p.56), and the same seems to apply to Latin, Greek and
Russian. However, my proposal is that in biblical Hebrew finite verb
forms also have pure relative tense, not absolute-relative tense -
thus your (Rolf's) quotation from Comrie is not strictly relevant to
this situation, although the discussion of it helped to clarify the
issues in my mind at least.

Comrie notes that "in Imbabura Quechua main clause verbs receive
absolute time reference, while most subordinate clause verbs receive
relative time reference... the suffixes for absolute and relative
tense are distinct" (p.61, and footnote). But it is interesting, in
the b-Hebrew context, that when Comrie states that "there are some
languages where even main clause verbs receive relative time
reference" (p.63), the only example he gives is Classical Arabic (but
not Modern Standard Arabic or "the vernaculars") - interesting because
of the close relationship between b-Hebrew and classical Arabic. So
let me quote more from Comrie: "[Classical] Arabic has morphologically
an opposition between two verb tense-aspects, conventionally called
imperfect and perfect. In addition to aspectual values, the imperfect
has the time reference meaning component of relative non-past, while
the perfect has the time reference meaning component of relative past.
In neutral contexts, i.e. where no reference point is given explicitly
by the context, the reference point is taken to be the present moment,
thus giving the impression of absolute non-past meaning for the
imperfect but past meaning for the perfect. However, if the context
indicates some other point as reference point, then the basic relative
time reference meaning of the verb form surfaces, as in <wa ttaba`u
(perfect) mA tatlU (imperfect) 'l-$ayATInu `alA mulki sulaymAna> 'and
they followed what the demons used to recite in Solomon's reign',
where the past time reference interpretation of the imperfect verb
tatlU is established by the time adverbial 'in Solomon's reign';
<'aji'u-ka (imperfect) 'iDA 'Hmarra (perfect) 'l-busru> 'I will come
to you when the unripe date ripens', where the subordinate verb is
perfect because its time reference is past relative to that of the
main clause (i.e. first the date will ripen, then I will come to
you)." (p.63).

Comrie continues to discuss the point of how we can be sure that these
tenses are really relative, "for instance by seeing whether the
allegedly relative tense is compatible with time adverbials that would
be incompatible with it on its absolute time reference interpretation:
this is the argument we used above for saying that Classical Arabic
has relative tense (the imperfect can collocate with adverbials
indicating a specific period in the past)..." (p.64).

I suspect that b-Hebrew is working quite similarly to classical Arabic
as described here, at least for non-verb first clauses. This is what
we might expect given the close relationship between the languages,
when we see how much Indo-European languages have in common in this
respect. Of course we have to say that in both Hebrew and Arabic
relative tenses have become absolute tenses in the post-classical
period, perhaps because both have been affected in parallel by
Indo-European (e.g. Greek, Spanish) influence. What do you all think?

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: RE[6] (CC:Rolf, Peter, Niccatti,Hatav) Can Hebrew tense
Author: <furuli AT online.no> at Internet
Date: 10/10/1999 13:57


Dear Moon,

Thank you for your questions and observations. My comments come in between
your text.


>Dear Rolf, I have some comments on your treatment of subordinate temporal
>clauses:
<snip>

RF:
Let me quote a long portion from Bernard Comrie "Tense, 1985, p 65,66:

"The notion of absolute-relative tense may be illustrated by examining the
pluperfect in English....

<snip>




  • Comrie and relative tenses in Arabic and Hebrew, peter_kirk, 10/16/1999

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page