Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Michael Abernathy <mabernathy AT isot.com>]

That is not an idiomatic use. The American Heritage Dictionary gives the 
following definitions for would:

  1. Used to express desire or intent: She said she would meet us at
     the corner.
  2. Used to express a wish: Would that we had gone with you!
  3. Used after a statement of desire, request, or advice: I wish you
     would stay.
  4. Used to make a polite request: Would you go with me?
  5. Used in the main clause of a conditional statement to express a
     possibility or likelihood: If I had enough money, I would buy a
     car. We would have gone to the beach, had the weather been good.
     See Usage Note at if <http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=if>.
  6. Used to express presumption or expectation: That would be Steve at
     the door.
  7. Used to indicate uncertainty: He would seem to be getting better.
  8. Used to express repeated or habitual action in the past: Every
     morning we would walk in the garden.

Vadim, your arguments are becoming circular. "The discussed fact of 
using future tense to describe past events is just

such evidence." In the context of this discussion you have essentially said that the "imperfect" should be recognized as consistently representing a future tense. The future tense may describe a past event because of a shift of the deictic center. The fact that the imperfect may describe a past event proves the deictic shift. 
The argument only makes sense if the imperfect is correctly understood as representing the future tense at all times. The fact that it can be use to describe past events demands that further evidence is necessary to support both the proposition that it is future and that a deictic shift accounts for the apparent contradiction. 

This brings us to the start of your email. . . "a hypothesis can be accepted if no 
contradicting facts can be brought against it, and if the hypothesis is simpler than 
others."
Contradicting facts have been brought against your hypothesis. Short of Moses 
tapping you on the shoulder and telling you that your hypothesis is wrong, 
what evidence would you feel is sufficient to make you re-evaluate your 
hypothesis?

Sincerely,
Michael Abernathy
Vadim Cherny wrote:

> > > Let us first consider a method. How do you expect me to prove narrator's
> > > deictic center? Psychoanalysis? No.
> > >      
> > OK, so you are putting forward a hypothesis which is, by your own 
> > admission, unprovable - and for the same reason is unfalsifiable. As such 
> > it can only be a speculation.
> >
> >    
>
> Of course, not. As I described, and what is a standard method of scientific 
> proof, a hypothesis can be accepted if no contradicting facts can be brought 
> against it, and if the hypothesis is simler than others.
>
>  
>
> > I think you need to suggest how it is even reasonable to consider that a 
> > habitual action in the past is described from a deictic centre shifted 
> > even further into the past, when there is no evidence at all for such a 
> > deictic shift.
> >
> >    
> The discussed fact of using future tense to describe past events is just 
> such evidence.
> I assume, you don't dispute that deictic shifts exist.
>
>
>  
>
> > > To prove b), I invoke Russian and English examples, and show that such
> > > shifts are not alien to human mentality.
> > >      
> > The English example, "would" for a past habit, certainly does not indicate 
> > a deictic shift into the past.
> >    
>
> I can settle for calling that idiomatic usage, and then we can discuss 
> whether that idiomatic usage originally arose from deictic center shifts.
>
> Vadim Cherny 
>
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>
>
>
>  



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