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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Use and Misuse of Waw in Verb Tenses
  • Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 09:55:12 +0200

Dear Dale,

I studied Fanning thorougly fifteen years ago when I did some work on Greek aspects, but I have not opened his book in the ten years I have worked with my Hebrew dissertation. I do not think my Hebrew aspectual model has much in common with Fanning's model.

My problem when I am asked for a definition of Hebrew aspects, is that I can just give a sketch of my model, and that is likely to be misunderstood, because so much data is lacking. In order to compare Hebrew and English aspects I have invented three parameters based on the intersection of ET by RT, and because there are two aspects, it is possible to compare the aspects of the two languages in six different areas. In my dissertation I use 11 pages to discuss the application of these three parameters to the aspects, and even the main points cannot be conveyed in a short E-mail.

I would like to stress that my model does not build on vague expressions such as "internal" and "external," but I use the more specific linguistic concepts "reference time," "event time," and the "deictic center" as my tools. On the basis of these three tools my three parameters are, 1) the quality of focus (the nature of what is made visible -details, progression etc.), the angle of focus (where RT intersects ET - this is the most important parameter), and 3) the breadth of focus (how broad area of ET that is made visible by the intersection of RT). This is a completely new approach to aspect study and is very different from Fanning's approach.

As to Greek aspects, I have not compared all the finite and infinite verbs of the NT, or a great portion of the verbs in classical Greek texts - which I would set as a requirement to have a well reasoned view of Greek aspects. But the work I have done so far, suggests that Greek aspects are quite similar to Hebrew aspects and different from the English ones. Complicating the matter is that tense is grammaticalized in Greek but not in Hebrew. I take Greek present as the imperfective aspect and aorist as the perfective aspect, and tense is not a part of any of them. However, I take Greek imperfect as a combination of past tense and the imperfective aspect. So far I am not sure what Greek perfect really is. What is important in my view is that the angle of focus (all the different options for the intersection of ET by RT) are similar in Greek and Hebrew. And the same is true with the breadth of the focus caused by the intersection of ET by RT. The fact that tense is grammaticalized is an additional factor, which does not disturb the picture mentioned, but it makes it harder to find examples that meet my basic requirement for aspectual identification.

I attempt to make a scrupulous distinction between semantic meaning and conversational pragmatic implicature, and this is a completely new approach in Hebrew studies. To identify the semantic meaning of aspects I must find verbs where I with a reasonable certainty can know that a special characteristic is caused by the verb conjugation alone and not by a combination by lexical meaning, Aktionsart, Vendlerian characteristics and so on. This is my basic requirement, and less than one percent of all Hebrew verbs meet this requirement.
I will send you an article off-list with more explanations regarding aspects.


Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


Dr Dale M Wheeler wrote:
Rolf:

Did you interact with B. Fanning, Verbal Aspect, at all? What you seem to be describing is his terminology of "internal" vs "external" viewpoint, with the bounded vs unbounded having as much to do with the lexis of the verb being used as the tense/aspect being chosen.



**************************************************************************
Dale M. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Prof of Biblical Languages/Bible Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan Street Portland, OR 97220
V: 503-251-6416 E: dalemw AT multnomah.edu
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