Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 15/09/2005 19:50, Stoney Breyer wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vadim Cherny [mailto:VadimCherny AT mail.ru] 
> Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2005 12:34 PM
> To: Stoney Breyer; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] tenses - Ex 3:14
>
>
>  
>
> > VADIM: it is assumed that English has future tense.
> >
> > SB: Of course English has future tense; it is not grammatical,
> >    
> however,
>  
>
> > but lexical. English utterances have tense but English *verbs* do not.
> >    
>
> VADIM: write-wrote
>
> SB: It ain't that simple.
>  

I think you two need to use some terminology which distinguishes 
different verb forms or paradigms from the language of "tense". There 
are in English certainly two distinct forms which are conventionally 
labelled "present tense" and "past tense", or various modifications of 
those names. But those labels do not necessarily describe their meanings 
and/or uses accurately: some uses of the "present tense" are not 
present, and some uses of the "past tense" are not past.

And this is true all the more of Hebrew. We have been discussing a 
Hebrew verb form which Vadim calls "future tense" and others call 
"imperfect". Both of these are imperfect labels, although in my opinion 
"imperfect" is not very imperfect for biblical Hebrew - whereas "future 
tense" is appropriate for modern Hebrew. And so it is for a good reason 
that on this list and elsewhere this verb form is commonly labelled in a 
way which is semantically neutral, based only on the form: YIQTOL. It 
might help us all to avoid misunderstanding if we stick to this 
convention, when identifying the verb form rather describing than its 
semantics.

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



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