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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Tenses and aspects; was: footnotes

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Vadim Cherny <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Tenses and aspects; was: footnotes
  • Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2005 22:32:54 +0100

On 08/08/2005 20:01, Vadim Cherny wrote:

...

Vadim, you clearly don't have a clue about how professional translation
is done.



I didn't - before I realized--with shagrin--that yours and Rolf's views on
translation are not bizarre, but common.


Well, Vadim, my views on translation are totally opposed to Rolf's. But both his views and mine are quite common. About the only thing we agree on relative to this thread is that Hebrew does not have tenses.

...

Do you know more about Burmese than the professional linguists who state
that it has no tenses?



I have no idea about Burmese, but your other two examples, Arabic and
Chinese, were plain wrong. But I really, really doubt that those Burmese
folks have no idea of time, and thus don't have tenses. Most likely, they
have tense constructs (like Chinese) instead of affixes.


Well, probably Burmese, like Chinese, indicates time by added adverbs etc rather than grammaticalised tense. And probably Hebrew does more or less the same. Of course they have an idea of time, but they don't link that to a grammatical category.

Of course Hebrew had some obvious adverbial devices for stating clearly
whether an event was past, present or future if necessary.



Come on. They are so rare. Phrases like "yesterday he say" are few, if any.
If Hebrew affixes form aspects, not tenses, then Tanakh--and Hebrew thought
of the time--practically did not employ tenses.


In most cases the time is clear from the context. For example, the entire narrative of a historical book must be past. And in such cases there is no need for a specifying adverb, so none is written. Isn't this also true of Chinese?

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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