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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Genesis 15:6

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com>
  • To: 'Biblical Hebrew' <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Genesis 15:6
  • Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 08:20:36 -0700

On 25/07/2003 08:05, Stoney Breyer wrote:

Stoney Breyer
Writer
Touchwood, Inc.
314 421-9878

In English, how about "Now he had believed his friends would always help

him out, but when he really needed them they didn't want to know." To me

this implies that he no longer believed.
[SB:] Well, yes, but that implication is in the second clause, and
particularly the "but", not in the tense of the first clause. Compare
"Now he had believed his friends would always help him out, and in fact when he really needed them they all pitched in."


Sounds like an oxymoron to me. Seriously - unless followed by something like "Even so, their grudging expressions made him realise that he couldn't count on them for the next time."

I think the difference may be whether we are thinking of "believe" as an inceptive or a stative verb. And I wonder if it may be a subtle British versus American difference. In my British English, "believe" is usually stative and we would say "start to believe" or "come to believe" for the inceptive sense, although especially in a religious context just "believe" can be used inceptively as a shorthand. And the past perfect of a stative verb implies that the state is ended, although the past perfect of an inceptive verb does not. Another verb with a similar ambiguity is "understand"; "he had understood" may imply that he no longer understood, but not necessarily.

But this is a question of English, not Hebrew.

--
Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/






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