Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

I'm sorry, I can't help you much there. Written Chinese is 
mostly Mandarin, I speak Cantonese. However, I have learned 
enough characters to recognize that in John 1:1-15, the 
first adverb specifying time is in verse 14. Then that 
adverb has as much to do with specifying that the writer 
had personally experienced what he was writing about as 
time. There are plenty of verbs in the past before that 
verse.

Genesis 1 has what looks like more than half the verbs 
without a time specifying adverb in Chinese, and some of 
the others I'm not sure because I never studied Chinese 
writing, at least not formally.

Chinese also does not have grammaticized aspect.

I have no problem with saying that Biblical Hebrew had no 
grammaticized tense.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
> 
...
> 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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