Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>]

It has been recently demonstrated to you that neither tenses nor aspects are 
grammaticalised in 
the English language.
 
Yesterday I wrote. (Past tense, Perfect aspect)
I wrote to her every day (past tense, imperfect aspect)
If I wrote you a blank check now...(Present tense, perfect aspect)
If I never wrote to you again (future tense, perfect and imperfect aspect)
 
The same can be said of Russian.
 
chto delaesh? What are you doing? (now)
chto delaesh? What do you do? (every day i.e past and future)
 
Examples of this behaviour can be found in every language and it is clear 
that neither tense nor aspect 
is 100% grammaticalised in any language. However, the understanding of past, 
present, future, completed, 
unique, repeated, habitual etc. actions is present in every language and it 
is always the context that decides 
this.
As context is such a vague expression, allow me to rephrase that. It is the 
combinations of 'words' that convey 
the sense of tense, aspect, continuation, repetition etc. and it is therefore 
unreasonable to assign a rigid tense 
to a particular form which exists outside of a context and then insist that 
such a form have that tense in every 
context it is found in. This is the basis of my translation machine.
 

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Dear Yitzhak,
 
Raamses II is accredited to being of the 13th century. His name means 
begotten of Ra (the son god) i.e. Ra's son. It was believed that he was the 
pharoah of the exodus based on inscriptions claiming that he built the city 
of 
the same name by use of slavery. However, this assumption is weak because the 
city he built (per-ramses)  
was described as the capital city of his time and as such should not be 
connected with the mere storage place 
of the biblical ramses. Furthermore, the exodus (circa 1513) happened 200 
-300 years before his reign and so 
the exodus could not have started from a city which had not even been built 
yet.
 
D.B Redford comments 'Biblical Raamses and the capital Pr R'-ms-sw, apart 
from the personal name, seem 
to have nothing in common. In the lack of corroborative evidence it is 
absolutely essential to exercise caution 
in equating the two' (Vetus Testamentum, Leiden, page 410, 1963

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Dear Yitzhak,
 
In order to build a chronology we need a reference point which is well 
established. Let's use the 
return from exile, which took place in 537. The desolation took place 70 
years earlier and that 
takes us back to 607. Ezekiel tells us (in prophetic language) that the 
division of the kingdoms of 
Isreal and Judah took place 390 years earlier. This brings us to 997. Solomon 
reigned 40 years and 
begun temple construction in his 3rd year. So the temple began to be built in 
1034. 1Ki6:1 tells us that 
the temple began to be built in the 480th year after the exodus. This takes 
us to 1513. 430 years earlier 
Yah struck a deal with Abraham, 1943. Adding up the generations back to the 
flood we get 427 years 
and this places the flood at 2370. Then you just add up the generations again 
and this takes you back 
to our great, great, great, great ...grandad Adam who was born in 4026, 
approx 6 thousand years ago.
 
Of course, I would welcome you criticisms as it would help me to gain a 
better understanding of 
this chronology.
 
Shalom

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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verb Inflection & Tense
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Re: [b-hebrew] Verb Inflection & Tense> Examples of this behaviour can be 
found in every language and it is clear that neither tense nor aspect is 100% 
grammaticalised in any language. 

We discuss a different issue, if you see the logical difference. Of course, 
no semantical concept is fully grammaticalized; no one argues that.
Rather, the issue is what the grammaticalized devices represent: tense, 
aspect, or anything else.

Now, a hypothesis is accepted if it passes three tests:

- known facts generally conform to the hypothesis
- non-conforming facts are few and explainable deviations (deictic shifts or 
grammatical errors, in our case)
- Occam's

The tense hypothesis is the simplest, and passes Occam's. Grammatical errors 
and deictic shifts can't be many.
There is only one real test: are there non-conformiung facts, that is, the 
verbs which are contextually meaningless if read as tenses? So far, all the 
examples offered made sense as tenses.

And my question to Rolf and other adherents of the aspects theory: could you 
offer an example of yiqtol which clearly does not refer to the future events, 
and not deictically shifted? I postulate that no such example exists. Could 
anyone prove the opposite?

Vadim Cherny


  As context is such a vague expression, allow me to rephrase that. It is the 
combinations of 'words' that convey 
  the sense of tense, aspect, continuation, repetition etc. and it is 
therefore unreasonable to assign a rigid tense 
  to a particular form which exists outside of a context and then insist that 
such a form have that tense in every 
  context it is found in. This is the basis of my translation machine.


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