Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> "Whichever paper you open (future), the talk
> is only of women". Perhaps it is something highly colloquial. Well, if
> this usage is included, the Russian (perfective! as usually analysed)
> future is more like YIQTOL than I realised, in that it can be used both
> for real future and for habitual past and present. But that doesn't mean
> that YIQTOL is a real future tense, which can refer only to future
> events, although it suggests that the Russian future is not as simple as
> it appears.
>

Hebrew and Russian future tense is a "real" future tense. But occasionally
grammatical future tense is used with shifted reference point for past
reference. Such usage is a rare exception both in Hebrew and in Russian. It
is not colloquial at all; some usage is actually archaic. I guess, most
languages have that kind of exceptions. Even English verbs could be used for
non-standard reference, such as "would" for the past ("every time we met, I
would say him") or "were" for singular ("if he were"); can and could are
interchangeable in questions. That doesn't make English verbs tenseless.
Besides, in each case we were able to trace a reason for non-standard usage,
usually shift of the time reference point. Consider that a similar thing
happens with verb stems: where English speaker see active verb "dictate,"
Hebrew speaker see passive verb "make write." Hebrew and Russian speakers
have no semantical porblem with future tense where English speakers,
accustomed to different conventions, see oddities.

> >About 1Sam1:7, can't we say even in English about the past events, "And
thus
> >he will do year-in and year-out, repeating the same thing over and over
> >again?" In Russian, these turns are not common, but they occur. In
Hebrew,
> >they are not common, either.
> >
> Not with "will", at least this would not be standard English when the
> action is not actually future, but "would" is normal.
>

See, quite the same thing. Even after I wrote many works in English, I still
have a problem with will/ would and can/ may. Semantical base of languages
differ, and using future tense for the past reference, normal for Hebrews
and Russians, is odd for English speakers.

Vadim Cherny