Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Matthew Anstey" <manstey AT portal.ca>]

Gday Dave,

[Dave]
>> >I don't think aspect is in view.  Aspect in Hebrew depends on
>> >context and the meanings of the verbs used.
>>
[Matthew]
>> Which sort of "aspect" are you talking about?
>
[Dave]
>???  You were the one who asked "what are they aspectually?"
>I'm not sure what it is you're fishing for.

[Matthew]

I wasn't intending any fishing and I should have explained my self clearer.
You mention below that you equate Aktionsart and aspect. I differentiate (or
better, the model (Dik's FG) I'm using differentiates) 4 levels of aspect.
Aktionsart describes the mode of action of the situation, divided
traditionally into Accomplishments, Activities, States, and Processes (diff.
theories divide further, or change labels). Perfectivity and Phasal Aspect
are the 2 level, and capture various distinctions of the internal dynamics
of the situation, such as perfectivity, ingressive, etc. Quantification
Aspect is the 3rd level, and captures different forms of quantification of
sets of occurences of the situation, such as Iterative, Frequentative, etc.
Perspectival Aspect is the fourth level and relates the situation to an
outside temporal reference point. This may clarify my position, but possibly
also moves the discussion into more aspectual complexities than necessary.
Van Valin on the other hand, in Role and Reference Grammar, acknolwedges
these 4 layers, but only calls the second level Aspect. He calls the first
one Aktionsart, or Predicate Typology. Although different theories label
aspect differently, almost everything I've read distinguishes Aspect (ie
Perfectivity; German: Aspekt) from Aktionsart (eg in BH - Hatav,
Winther-Nielsen, Zevit, Waltke & O'Connor).

[Matthew]
>
>"Context and meaning of the
>> verbs used" sounds like Aktionsart. I am talking about Perfectivity, an
>> independent but related grammatical category. If wayyiqtol grammaticises
>> perfectivity, the example above needs more explanation as it relates two
>> situations that (it is highly reasonable to assume) occur *within* the
>> temporal development of the first situation (the battle).
>
[Dave]
>I'm not saying wayyiqtol grammaticises perfectivity.

[Matthew]
I didn't mean to imply that you did. I only meant, "If a person thinks
wayyiqtol grammaticises perfectivity ,etc.."

[Dave]
I'm saying it doesn't grammaticise any aspect, whether perfectivity,
>imperfectivity, or whatever.  All those things are contained within
>the semantics of the words used.

[Matthew]
Because I distinguish Aspect from Aktionsart I would say that perfectivity
is not contained within the semantics of any word in any language.

[Matthew]
>
>> >and If so, how would the
>> >> reader know not to link these sequentially, or to see them as
>perfective.
>> >
>> >The reader would know not to link these sequentially because a
>> >native speaker would have known that the wayyiqtol is not
>> >sequential.
>>
>> Do you follow Comrie then in taking sequentiality as implicature? Hatav
>> argues that sequentiality is grammaticised in Hebrew in the
>wayyiqtol form,
>> but examples like the above also present problems for this view.
>
[Dave]
>I haven't read Comrie, but I take sequentiality as being a function of
>context, not of verb form.  Yes, I part company with Hatav on this
>point.

>
>> The wayyiqtol is the simple clause: "They did battle.
>> >Some people fell.  Uriah also died."  There are no syntactic
>> >dependencies or other types of connection (temporal, causal,
>> >result, apposition), each clause says what it says.  Doing battle is
>> >an inherently non-perfective action, so the aspect is contained in
>> >the meaning of the verb.
>>
[Matthew]
>> Again I think that there is mismatch of terminology here. TO BATTLE is
>> dynamic, non-telic, and controlled by the Agent, so its Aktionsart is
>> Activity (or as you wrote Action). But perfectivity is
>independent of this
>> and not inherent. An imperfective view of a battle would be the soldier's
>> view, a perfective view would be the historians. So Aktionsart
>is contained
>> in the verb (more strictly in the predicate, since TO DO BATTLE
>FOR 3 DAYS
>> is telic, and THE STORM BATTLED THE FOREST is not Agentive etc).
>
[Dave]
>Define for me what you mean by aktionsart.  I'm operating under
>the definition used in Greek, which is essentially the same as
>"aspect."  I suspect you're using some terms in a different way
>here.  What I'm saying is, perfectivity and imperfectivity are not
>functions of the verb forms in Hebrew.  They are semantic factors of
>the words involved.

[Matthew]
Hopefully what I wrote above has now clarified the differences we have. My
definitions are all borrowed. Aktionsart is from Dik: "the semantic nature
of the whole predication as codetermined by the nature of the arguments and
satellites with which the predicate combines." I am still working on
choosing a satisfactory definition of Aspect (re Level 2 from above), but
for the moment, the traditional will do, "the internal structure of the
event itself." (LaPolla & Van Valin).

[Dave]
>> Some people were killed, Uriah among
>> >them.  These are events that are inherently perfective (the act of
>> >dying tends to have a definite terminus) so their aspect is
>> >contained in the meanings of the verbs, as well.
>>
[Matthew]
>> Perfective should be distinguished from telicity.
>
[Dave]
>How so?  Define what you mean by "perfectivity" then.

[Matt]

By Perfectivity I mean that the situation is conceived of from the outside
as a single complete event (like a spectator watching a marching band). By
Imperfectivity I mean the view of one of the marches in the band. This
metaphor is from Isacenko. By telicity I mean that the situation has an
inherent terminal point. So the verb "rotate" is non-telic and the verb "dry
out" is telic. There is therefore an inherent incompatibility between
Imperfective verbs and telic events, and this often forces an iterative
interpretation. (eg The wet pants dried out several times). This is common
in BH. Likewise, a Perfective verb with a State often forces out an
ingressive interpretation, as in "it began to rotate." This is also common
in BH. W&O have many examples of both. This is what Peter was perhaps
thinking when he translated, "The battle began and some men died and Uriah
died".
>

[Matthew]
>You seem to have bleached the
>> wayyiqtol of all semantic function.
>
[Dave]
>Syntactic forms don't have "semantic function."  That one of the
>fundamental principles of separation of syntax and semantics.  I
>haven't bleached anything; it wasn't there to begin with.

[Matthew]
It depends on what you mean by "separation," and this question takes into
heavy theoretical disputes. I disagree with the Chomskian position, the
"syntactocentric view of language". I hold to the
"communication-and-cognition perspective" as Van Valin puts it. Syntax is
not autonomous, nor is it the central aspect of language, rather is is the
status/relationship between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics that is
paramount. Syntactical categories (like predicate, terms) are semantically
motivated.

[Matthew]
>If it does not grammaticise aspect or
>> tense, what does it do? What relationship does it have to the deictic
>> centre? It seems like a *great* amount of implicature is being placed on
>> wayyiqtol.
>
[Dave]
>I could say "read my _Hebrew Studies_ paper," but basically what
>it does is signal a syntactically independent thought, a simple
>declarative sentence without syntactic connections to what
>precedes.  "Syntactic connection" says nothing about semantic
>connections, and in fact there are some semantic connections in
>these clauses.  But they are functions of semantics, not syntax.
>It's important to keep the two separate.  And I have no idea what
>you mean by a great amount of implicature.

[Matthew]
I have your paper, but I have so far only skimmed it. I'll look at it more
closely later. By great amount of implicature I mean that, unless perhaps
you formalise "semantic connections", the reader is expected, using Grice's
norms of conversational implicature, to put together in Hebrew narrative the
order of events, and the aspectual perspective on the events.
>
[Matthew]
>> >> Why isn't the Hebrew, wayhi behillachem wayyapol ...?
>> >
[Dave]
>> >Without asking the author we can't be sure, but I suspect that the
>> >rapid-fire change of verbal subjects may have something to do with
>> >it.  The soldiers came out of the city, engaged Joab in battle, some
>> >Israelites fell, Uriah died also.  Bing, bang, boom.  Considering
>> >what David told Joab to do to Uriah, this quick run-down of the
>> >action following the siege tells us in very blunt language and
>> >structure that David's plan to get rid of Uriah worked just the way
>> >he planned it.
>>
[Matthew]
>> But then if Joab is cancelling the converstional implicature by
>using three
>> wayyiqtols, doesn't that mean that on a normal interpretation three
>> wayyiqtols would be perfective?
>
[Dave]
>Where did you get anything about "cancelling the converstional
>[sic] implicature" from what I wrote?  I'm afraid you're reading your
>own discourse approach into my non-discourse approach.

[Matt]
Sorry, I think I have confused myself by introducing implicature. I don't
know enough about implicature in BH to know if it is being cancelled here or
not, so I retract what I said. I would only note that my approach is not a
discourse approach, but it is heavily semantic and pragmatic. But I do not
start with a top-down analysis of the Hebrew as determined by the discourse
genre, and neither do I divide foreground/background by verb forms. I am
still undecided as to how and when to integrate discourse analysis into
linguistic description, but unless we know how the individual forms work
(both syntactically and semantically) then I think the top-down approach is
weak. As Halliday says, a linguistic theory must come at the language from
three angles, bottom-up, top-down, and sideways. Each perspective sees
things the others miss.

[Matthew]
>> However, I have also thought of an alternative explanation that combines
>> your observations about the context (Aktionsart) and
>perfectivity. Concepts
>> such as "battles", "meetings", "carnivals" etc tend to be seen as single
>> "events" just like "explosions" "drinking tea" etc. Such complex
>events have
>> unusual syntactical properties, and I think this may solve our problems.
>
>No, they have unusual semantic properties, not syntactic
>properties.

[Matthew]
We are both talking universally, and we agree that they have particular
semantic features. If in a particular language "complex event" verbs have
unique syntactic behaviours (which I imagine someone could find an example
of) then we could say, in some languages they have 'unusual' syntactic
properties. For example, if in Hebrew, with a wayyiqtol they introduce an
F-time rather than moving the R-time forward, then in BH wayyiqtol "complex
event" verbs have syntactic properties, but a native speaker would be very
helpful at this stage to verify this. (But if one doesn't view tense as a
syntactical property, then it does not have on that view syntactic
properties).

I hope this lengthy response clarifies my position. Thanks for the dialogue.

With regards,
Matthew Anstey