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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] tenses

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  • From: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
  • To: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] tenses
  • Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 17:15:18 +0300

I wote several times that I imagine only two possible ways to prove deictic shift: psychoanalysis of a writer and analyzing the context. Deictic shifts I mentioned are contextually plausible. ...

In some cases, maybe, in other cases, no. Anyway, you need to do better than to say that the deictic shift is plausible, you need to demonstrate that it has actually occurred.

How, Peter, how? It is a matter of interpreting context, more or less plausibly. By that logic, you should ask every translator to prove that the writer meant a partuclar sense. Ask Rolf to prove that Isaiah meant "in his death" rather than "high places" or "altars." Interpretation could be plausible or no. Deictic shifts could be plausible or no. They cannot be absolutely proven. Nor, for that matter, anything could be absolutely proven in natural sciences. Poincare advanced an extreme version of that idea, called conventionalism, that all knowledge is a matter of accepted conventions. Back to reasonable, is it proved that the earth is round? No, it is shown as plausible. Perhaps all the measurement scarried are wrong, and astronauts lie. Is it proved that speed of light is the limit? No, it is only shown is philosophically plausible, and entanglement challenges that notion. Nothing could be proved, except in mathematics, and even there only in a given system of axioms.
Put it another way, what is the proof of the aspect hypothesis?

We agree that a hypothesis must be falsifiable to be properly scientific. What we disagree on is whether this particular hypothesis is falsifiable.

The tense hypothesis is easily falsifiable. If I cannot show, for the counterexamples given, that either future tense or its derivatives (idioms, deictic shifts) fit the context - and do so plausibly for detached observers - then the hypothesis fails. Sure enough, we have an issue of a detached reasonable observer. So far, I see your comments on the context as reasonable.

You seem to accept that yiqtols, where not straight future or plausible deictic shift, could be approximated with "would." The main part of our quarrel is whether "would" is future tense. But I don't argue that either "would" or the corresponding yiqtols in Hebrew are future tense. I say, they etymologically derive from future tense. (Thus, when speaker describes a habitual action, he is transposed into its midst, and seeing the action as continuing into the future, he uses future tense; I suggest, this was the original idea behind using "would" instead of any other word to describe habitual action.) Thus, my point is that originally all yiqtols were future tense; later, they diversified. In some cases, yiqtols do not refer to the future. Such cases, however, are rare, explicit from the context, and do not warrant disregarding tenses in overwhelming majority of verbs. To put it another way, Hebrew do not explicitly differentiate between "will" and "would." But that does not mean that yiqtol means aspects instead of will/would.

Vadim Cherny







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