Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Monday 19 September 2005 01:01, Vadim Cherny wrote:
> > There is a national language institute in the Philippines
> > as well as language departments in the many fine
> > Universities there where native speaking scholar study
> > Tagalog and other Austronesian languages.  The geographic
> > ranges of these languages stretch from Madagascar to Taiwan
> > to Easter Island and many have long histories of written
> > literature with a variety of alphabets and syllabaries
> > (Roman, Arabic, Indian, and indignous).  You may rest
> > assured that the characterization of verb inflection for
> > aspect and not tense is not some artificially imposed
> > construct from ignorant outsiders but very much how the
> > native scholars view the issue.
>
> I can't argue about Tagalog, of course. Never even heard about it before.
> But I really, really wonder if it is possible to establish a subtle
> difference of meaning between imperfect and future tense based on
> commentaries of the natives. Could there be a similar bias as in Hebrew,
> where scholars did not recognize deictic center shifts and took future for
> imperfect?

I think it's clear by now that the bias is on your end, not anybody else's.  
Note that he didn't say someone else was doing this "based on commentaries of 
the natives" (I note that you still seem to use the term "natives" as though 
it carried the same connotations as the 19th-century English expression 
"savage" which is still blatantly racist and out of line), but that native 
speakers were doing this.

It is clear that your hypothesis won't hold up under scrutiny.  When 
questioned, you retreat into bad English such as your butchery of the term 
"would" in another thread, or unfounded charges of bias.  If you look at it 
honestly, that should tell you something.  I'm an arrogant, self-important 
jerk with delusions of grandeur, and even I can't reasonably accuse everyone 
who disagrees with me of having some kind of bias :-)  The problem is not 
with someone else's bias, but with your baseless and erroneous theory.  
Period.

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"Maybe I'll trade it for a new hat."