Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan-buth <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

JBTucker katav:  >I was under the impression that the conjugations do not
indicate tense, but 
>indicate aspect (relation of an action to the passage of time.)

Too simplistic.
That's what "they" tell beginning students to prevent them from thinking
that the Hebrew verbs are simple tenses. They forget to say, or do not
themselves realize, that they are not simple aspects either, or that it is
wrong to imply that there is no temporal connection whatsoever with the
verbs. 
(on a definition of aspect-->basically viewing a predication/event/state
from within in various kinds of process or open-ended state, versus viewing
it 'simply' from without. however, this is not the sole motivation in
encoding a Hebrew verb.)

Randall Buth