Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hebrew tenses are different from English tenses in that Hebrew commonly 
employs deictic shifts, like Russian. Relying on English and German 
grammatical mentality led many scholars to miss the consistency of tense 
usage in Hebrew.

Now, I suggest that the same tendency of applying English grammatical 
mentality may be behind the rejection of the semantical consistency of 
paradigms. I would like to invite everyone to offer examples of verbs which 
he thinks inconsistent with the paradigmal meaning (such as an active verb in 
niphal). Then we would consider if perhaps the semantics is different in 
other languages.

For example, hactiv, to dictate, is an active verb in English with no 
immediate sense of causation. Yet, Hebrew emphasizes its causativeness, and 
reasonably so: the relevance of dictation is in causing someone to write.

Another example: in English, to enter is active verb. Hebrew nicnas is 
passive. Using niphal, however, makes sense, by entering, a person "is 
joined," becomes together with others in the same place. This might seem far 
relation, but in Russian a request to enter (literally, "come into") the room 
could be answered with, "Join us!" (присоединяйтесь).

Other cases of seeming inconsistency of verb meanings with paradigmal 
meanings might be explained similarly: paradigmal meaning of a verb is absent 
in English but present elsewhere. Thus, strongest examples of inconsistency 
are welcome, and let us analyze them.

Vadim Cherny
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From: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
To: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] tenses - Ex 3:14
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> >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?
> >
> Reasonable, but this definition of "future tense" does not apply to the
> YIQTOL form in biblical Hebrew. This has already been demonstrated in
> numerous examples.
>

I don't understand. In recent discussion, I demonstrated that yiqtols are
employed consistently as future tense with deictic shifts - on all the
examples offered by the respondents. And I saw no objections from you. Now
you say that yiqtol is not future tense.

Please offer me just one example, where yiqtol is not a future tense in the
sense I described above.

Vadim Cherny