Biblical Hebrew Forum

[furuli AT online.no]

Dear Peter,

Please read Comrie, perhaqps his comments can help you.


Best regards

Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo




> On 26/05/2004 11:35, furuli AT online.no wrote:
>
> > Dear Geroge,
> >
> > By "preterite," do you mean "grqmmaticalized past tense," i.e. that 
> > the WAYYIQTOL is uncancellable past tense in any context, ...
>
>
> Do such tenses exist in any language? Or is this merely a 
> theoretical construct?
>
> > ... just as English "went" and "walked"? ...
>
>
> These are not uncancellably past. In "If I walked down the road now, 
> I would meet my neighbours in their garden", "walked" is not past, 
> because its past meaning is cancelled by the conditional 
> construction. The same is true in "When my friend comes tomorrow, he 
> will complain that he walked a long way, but I did tell him I would 
> pick up him up at the station", because the past meaning is 
> cancelled by its subordination to a future verb. And most languages 
> are more flexible than English, not less, in their use of verb 
> tenses.
>
> > ... If so, is it possible to differentiate between "past tense" and 
> > "past reference," or are all verbs with past reference preterites? 
> > ...
>
>
> I would suggest that all verb forms which indicate past time when 
> used in unmarked contexts are past tenses or preterites. But most if 
> not all of these verb forms can also be used with non-past reference 
> in marked constructions, for example as relative past within a 
> future. The details vary from language to language.
>
> The exceptional cases of non-past WAYYIQTOL etc which you have 
> listed are necessarily in marked constructions, because if there 
> were not some kind of marking you would have no way of identifying 
> them as non-past.
>
> --
> Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/