Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> I think you two need to use some terminology which distinguishes
> different verb forms or paradigms from the language of "tense".

I offered my definition recently:

Tense describes the reference time from narrator's point of view.

That is to say, future tense must refer to the future from the narrator's
deictic centre, and past tense likewise.

Now, narrator's deictic centre might be shifted, and so future tense
sometimes refers to the past events - from the point of view of the reader
or of narrator's contemporaries. This is still future tense.

Does that seem reasonable?

Vadim Cherny