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  • From: Michael Abernathy <mabernathy AT isot.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] tenses - Ex 3:14
  • Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 19:05:15 -0400

Vadim,
Do you realize that you have just defined the Hebrew future so that it includes the present?


Vadim Cherny wrote:

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?


SB: Perfectly reasonable. And how many tenses do you recognize?


qatal - past
weqatal - future. Note common role of waw as reversing device in
qatal/weqatal and hiphil/hophal.
q'tol - imperative
yiqtol - late form of the future tense, derived from imperative
wayiqtol - last form of the past tense, symmetrically modeled upon weqatal.
Note its predominant usage to impute the sense of archaic narration.
Hebrew doesn't have present tense, and rightly so: an action is either ended
(thus past tense), or continues into the future (thus, FT). The qotel form
is late and is not really a verb.

Vadim Cherny

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