Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Alviero,

You wrote the following to Galia, and sorry to say, I am more confused than
ever about what you mean by "tense". Bernhard Comrie ("Tense", 1985, vii)
defines tense as "a grammaticalization of location in time". I understand
this to mean that "tense" is semantic, i.e. it is connected with verb
*forms* and not with verb *function*. For example, a verb that *is* a
preterit ( such as "went" and "bought") is a preterit in all kinds of
discourses and contexts. The only exceptions will be special cases where an
idiomatic use allows a seemingly non-past use. But such a use must be
accounted for and cannot just be claimed.
Is this also your understanding of "tense"? Or put differently, when we see
a WAYYIQTOL in poetry and prose, in mainline and background, can we take
for granted that the meaning is past, i.e. that the reference time is
before the deictic point?


Regards

Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo




>
>5) (AN) Again, no. By tense I mean a fix reference in time--past,
>present, and future.  English nicely distinguishes between
>chronological time and grammatical tense. What we have in a text is
>tense, not time. Tense and time may coincide or diverge. It is the
>author who decides, and the verbforms he uses reflect his decisions.
>IMO it is not correct to invoke the time of the event in order to
>establish the value of the verbforms. In other words, in the text we
>read the way the speaker/writer organized his information in a
>structured way--according to HIS time, irrespective of the
>chronological time. The time of the EVENTS themselves remains outside
>the tex and we have to recover it by interpretation. That is why I am
>always unease when one brings into the discussion of the verbal
>system the category of event-time.
>