Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Vadim,

although I have already shown you that assigning a primary grammatical tense 
to a form 
is incorrect, if a primary meaning were to be attached to 'would' it would 
most certainly 
not be future. By far the most common use of 'would' is the conditional,which 
you may argue 
is a hypothetical future but then you are missing the point of its basic 
substance.

I would give you the money if I had it. (present)
I would like to go. (present polite) as opposed to 'I want to go'
I would have been here earlier if ...(present tense perfect aspect)

When used with past sense the sense is of a repeated action and cannot fit in 
the contexts 
of the verses you are (mis)translating.

When my mother used to dress me I would fidget all the time. (habitual past)

In the negative it indicates a refusal

I asked him to do it but he wouldn't (past refusal)


Tenses are not grammaticalised. We are brainwashed to consider verb systems 
in terms of 
tenses and this causes us to impose false ideas on forms. Context and word 
combinations 
determine the tense and not only the form itself (although it possible to see 
that a 
form exhibits such in a maority of cases).

Consider English 'present'

I was walking down the street and he says to me... (past tense perfect sense)
I always go early. (past and future tense)
He works like a horse
Okay here's the plan. I go into the shop and you wait on the corner. Mark 
gets the car ready... (future tense)


-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of Vadim Cherny
Sent: Mon 9/19/2005 9:04 AM
To: Peter Kirk; Michael Abernathy
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] tenses - Deut1:44
 
> >Present tense
> >Deuteronomy 1:44 "they pursued you, as the bees do"

My reading was "as the bees would do".

Recall Rolf's example of 1Kings21:6: `Because I spoke (YIQTOL) to Nabot the
Jezreelite and said (WAYYIQTOL) to him...' Literally, "As I would speak to
Nabot."
In both cases, we have seemingly idiomatic form ci-yiqtol. Reading "as smbd
would do" suits both cases.
You argued that "as smbd would do" is not future tense in English, though I
am not sure what else is it. What is important for the tense hypothesis,
however, is that stand-alone "would do" is English future tense.
Similarly, yiqtol may be Hebrew future tense, but ci-yiqtol has idiomatic
usage.
Now, the question remains whether that idiomatic usage relates to deictic
center shift. First of all, the question is inessential. Idiomatic usage of
"as smbd would do" does not lead scholars to reject tenses in English, and
similar idiomatic usage of ci-yiqtol is no argument against tenses in
Hebrew. But, in my opinion, the deictic center shift is there.
The full form of the equivalent Russian idiom is, "as smbd might have done
in his place." This sense is implicit in English. That is, if bees would
take the place of the pursuers, the bees would behave so-and-so. Narrator
mentally clears the pursuers off the table, puts bees in their place, and
expects the bees to operate similarly. New deictic center is the moment of
putting bees on the table, and their actions are in the future.
The mode of thinking, of the deictic center shift, is purely conventional.
Russian allows both future (??? ????? ???????????? ?????, as the bees would
pursue) and, more conventionally, grammatical past (??? ????? ????????????
??, as the bees might have pursued). In the last case, the narrator is
detached, his deictic center is in the present, and he relays of the past
events.

Would you agree that Deut1:44 and 1Kings21:6 do not contradict the
hypothesis of Hebrew using tenses?

Vadim Cherny

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From: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
To: "Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] tenses - Deut1:44
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RE: [b-hebrew] tenses - Deut1:44Spanish and English use the future tense, 
inter alia, for:

- future reference
- imperative (you will do it)
- probable present (I would think, he is at home now)
- hypothetical future tense (I would rather be skiing)

This derivative, idiomatic usage does not invalidate the notion that English 
and Spanish have tenses. Hebrew also uses future tense idiomatically. This is 
no reason to dismiss future tense in Hebrew. The idiomatic usage is based 
upon semantics of the future tense; it is not that yiqtol was from the 
beginning employed in several meanings, and future tense came to be the most 
common. No, yiqtol was the future tense, and then diversified into idiomatic 
usage.

As you likely know, "would" is a form of "will." Hebrew verbs translated into 
English with "will" and "would"are, thus, semantically related.

Vadim Cherny


> although I have already shown you that assigning a primary grammatical 
> tense to a form
is incorrect, if a primary meaning were to be attached to 'would' it would 
most certainly
not be future. By far the most common use of 'would' is the conditional,which 
you may argue
is a hypothetical future but then you are missing the point of its basic 
substance.