Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ken Penner" <pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca>]

Peter wrote:

> "Would" NEVER indicates future tense and never has done. This is a 
> mother tongue speaker telling you that, with support from 
> several other 
> mother tongue speakers on this list, as well as from reference books. 

I think this is stated a bit too strongly. "Would" is considered "posterior
past" by Hans Reichenbach (Elements of Symbolic Logic, 297), the very man
responsible for the event model constituted by speech time (S), reference
time (R), and event time (E). Reichenbach's "posterior" is now generally
called "relative future tense," in which R precedes E.
"For the posterior past R-E-S the form 'he would do' is used, for instance
in 'I did not expect that he would win the race'" (297). Reichenbach also
gives "he was going to" as a substitute for this use of "would" (298).

Ken Penner, M.C.S. (Biblical Languages, Greek Focus), M.A. (Hebrew Poetry)
Ph.D. (cand.), McMaster University
pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca
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