Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

No, I don't. Please enlighten me.
It seems to me, I rather stated the contrary, that Hebrew doesn't operate in
present time, and there are no present time inflections.

Vadim Cherny


> Do you realize that you have just defined the Hebrew future so that it
> includes the present?
>
>
> >>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
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >b-hebrew mailing list
> >b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> >http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> -- 
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
> Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.1/104 - Release Date: 9/16/2005
>
>
>