Biblical Hebrew Forum

[furuli AT online.no]

Dear Peter,

What I tried to convey can be illustrated the following way:  The 
verb $YR "to sing" is marked for durativity and dynamicity. 
Regardless of whether you use the verb as QATAL, YIQTOL, or 
participle, you can never blot out the dynamicity and durativity of 
the root.  On the other hand, punctiliarity and stativity can change, 
because a punctiliar verb in Hebrew can in one context have a 
durative interpretation and a stative verb can in one context have a 
fientive interpretation. I  think most Hebraists would agree with 
this, possible except in the case with punctiliarity.

Regarding aspect, my claim is that a YIQTOL will always be 
imperfective, and no context can change that. Could you please refer 
to scholars who believe in an aspectual interpretation of Hebrew 
verbs who say that YIQTOL has one aspect in one context and another 
aspect or no aspect in other contexts?


Best regards

Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo











> On 10/06/2004 07:40, furuli AT online.no wrote:
>
> > ...
> >
> > I would say that the aspect can *only* be seen by verb morphology: 
> > QATAL and WEQATAL always signal the perfective aspect.  A Hebrew 
> > aspect can never be neutralized, but its nature is not always made 
> > visible in communication  (this is very important but usually 
> > neglected.
>
>
> I think that to be fair to a relative beginner like Eduard, you 
> should warn him that your view is idiosyncratic, and in particular 
> that your statement "A Hebrew aspect can never be neutralized" is in 
> fact an axiom or starting point of your system of linguistic 
> analysis (and one which is quite unacceptable on principle to me and 
> to many others) rather than a result of your analysis.
>
>
>
> --
> Peter Kirk