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  • From: "Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verb Inflection & Tense
  • Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2005 14:53:19 +0100

Dear Kevin,

I have no knowledge of Polynesian languages. At the University of Oslo there
is a weekly seminar where we read Sumerian texts. Sumerian is a language
family of itself with no other known relatives, although some traits may
superficially seem to be similar with Basque or Tibetan. On the basis of your
explanations it seems to me that there is a similarity with the seemingly
chaotic situation of the Polynesian languages and that of Sumerian. For
example, the new grammar of D. O. Edzard is very differend from the standard
grammer of M-L. Thomsen. My experience from several years of study is that
tense clearly is not grammaticalized in Sumerian. And because the
constructions of the verbs and their clauses are far more complex than for
instance Hebrew or Akkadian, and the language is dead, I see now way to know
whether aspect is grammaticalized in Sumerian. But the grammars claim that
aspect is there.

However, the Polynesian languages have living informants, and when these
informants describe actions, they do so from a certain vantage point (the
deictic center). I am quite sure that my model can be applied to the
Polenesian languages in a systematic, scientific way, even if the situation
seems to be chaotic. One result that should be rather easily obtained is
whether tense is grammaticalized. When no verb form, or verb form together
with particles, systematically refer to the past or to the future, we can
draw the conclusion that tense is not grammaticalized.

To ascertain whether aspect is grammticalized or not may be harder. But I
use three different parameters in order to find and define aspect: the
quality of focus, the angle of focus, and the breadth of focus of the
intersection of event time by reference time. I would guess that the
application of these parameters to Polynesian languages would at least give
some results, because it would be difficult to communicate in a language
whose verbs can have any meaning. Interestingly, I claim that imperfective
and perfective verbs in classical Hebrew can signal both incomplete and
completed situations (or bonded and unbounded situations, if this terminology
is preferred). If this is true, it means that the two Hebrew aspects are
similar in several respects. Nontheless, there are clear differences as well,
and on the basis of these we can say that aspect is grammaticalized in
Hebrew. So, I suspect that the seemingly chaotic state of Polynesian verbs
has some order after all, and that this can be demonstrated by an extensive
analysis of thousands of verbs and work with informants.


Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Riley
To: Rolf Furuli
Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2005 3:43 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verb Inflection & Tense


Comments below.

-------Original Message-------

From: Rolf Furuli
Date: 10/03/05 17:07:20
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verb Inflection & Tense

Dear Kevin,

Your points below regarding Polynesian and Austronesian are
informative.
But there is one problem, which I comment on below.

<snip>
>
> Myself, I don't see major difference between completed aspect
('having
> studied') and the past tense. I cannot imagine how scholars could
> establish
> that Polynesians mean aspect, not tense in this case. For example,
> consider
> a hypothetical Polynesian who studied but did not graduate. If
Tagalog has
> aspects, that Polynesian should use imperfect in describing his
studies.
> My
> guess, he would use perfect - which would therefore be not
perfective
> aspect, but past tense.

I agree that scholars would have great problems in distinguishing
between
"completed aspect" and "past tense" in the situation you mention. But
the
reason for the problem is not that this distinction cannot be made in
a
living or a dead language, but rather that assumptions that need not
be
correct are used. Thus, the problem may be theoretical rather than
practical.

A colleague of mine who has spent many years among native speakers on
islands in the Pacific ocean, and who is an expert of the native
languages,
said to me two weeks ago: "It is high time that we abandon the
traditional
definitions of aspects with their Slavic origin in the study of the
Pacific
languages. These definitions simply prevent progress in the language
studies."

It is very important to realize that while tense is a universal term,
which
means that its nature can be understood even in languages that do not
have
grammticalized tenses, aspectual definitions are not universal. So the
problem of distinguishing between "completed aspect" and "tense," as
mentioned above, is the application of the English aspectual model to
the
languages of the Polynesians.

There is a simple model by which tense and aspect can be
distinguished in
any language without looking at the foreign language in the light of
one`s
own language:

1) Use a corpus with a huge number of verbs (more than ten thousand
verbs is
preferable).
2) Find out whether verbs with the same morphology systematically
refer to
the future or to the past (smaller explainable exceptions are
accepted). If
not, tense is not grammticalized in that language.
3) Find out whether verbs with the same morphology systematically
refer to
completed or uncompleted events (smaller explainable exceptions are
accepted). If not, aspects in the traditional sense is not
grammaticalized
in that language.

I have made these tests for classical Hebrew (my corpus had 79,574
verbs),
and my finds are negative. Neither tense nor aspect (with the
definitions
completed/incomplete or complete/incomplete) are grammacalized in
classical
Hebrew. This is the falsification part of the approach based on the
hypothetic deductive method. But there is a positive part as well.

4) Use the parameters "event time," "reference time" and "deictic
center".
Find out whether reference time intersects event time in a
systematically
different way in verbs with one morphology in contrast with verbs with
another morphology. If that is the case, the language probably has
aspects,
and their nature must be defined on the basis of the nature of this
intersection of event time by reference time *in that language*.

In a living language this model is easy to apply, because we have
informants. In a dead language, the situation is more difficult, and
only in
a few clear-cut cases (hundreds rather than thousands) can the test
of the
intersection of event time by reference time be applied. In the other
cases
we can only use the cruder test of the relationship between event
time and
the deictic center.

The basic problem in studies of Hebrew verbs is that we apply an
aspectual
model construed on the basis of aspects in English, Russian, or other
languages, instead of testing the possible aspects in Hebrew in their
own
right. For example, many students of Hebrew use as a premise in their
study
that WAYYIQTOL, which, for the most part portray past, completed
actions,
either MUST be past tense or express the perfective aspect. Any claim
that
WAYYIQTOL is imperfective is unacceptable and will be rejected.
However,
in the Phoenician Karatepe inscriptions, the infinitive absolute
plays the
same role as WAYYIQTOL in Hebrew. There are 16 infinitive absolutes
with
prefixed WAW and 5 without prefixed WAW that describe past, completed
events. No one would claim that the infinitive absolute has an
intrinsic
past tense or perfectivity. Yet, it functions as if that was the
case! The
lesson we can learn is that we cannot know the intrinsic meaning of
verb
forms by looking at them from the outside, i.e., by looking at their
functions. The reason is that the functions of verbs in most cases are
pragmatically conditioned, i.e., the reason for the choice of verb is
the
context. We therefore need to look for clauses that are so clear-cut
that
the particular functions of the verb with a great deal of certainty
can be
said to come from the nature of the verb alone. I have done this test
in
classical Hebrew, and my conclusion is that WAYYIQTOL, WEYIQTOL, and
YIQTOL
are imperfective, i.e., the intersection of event time by reference
time in
a few hundred clear-cut cases is systematically different (and
qualifes for
the definition "imperfective") from the intersection in QATAL and
WEQATAL.

But please note: In order to test these conclusions one has to get
rid of
the straightjacked of the traditional aspectual definitions. One must
start
afresh with the fundamental parameters "reference time," "event
time," and
"deictic center" and try hard to conduct the study with as little
prejudice
as possible.


**************************
This is where Polynesian languages [among others] present
difficulties.
They do not have a simple Perfect(ive)/Imperfect(ive) distinction,
nor a
tense distinction. 'Ka' and 'kua' are tenseless as they can be used
to
refer to past, present and future. 'Ka' has no aspect, as it makes
no
claims at all about whether the action is completed or incomplete,
ongoing,
or any other condition except that it is a state or action. 'Kua' has
aspect, as it always refers to what are viewed as completed actions or
states completely entered in to, but there is no 'opposite' that
indicates
the imperfect in the same way. It usually refers to fairly recent
past, but
not always certainly not often enough to attribute 'past time' as
one of
its attributes. 'E...ana' is an aspect as it refers to ongoing or
incomplete actions. It is made up of 'e' which has the meaning
'non-past'
and 'ana' meaning 'imperfect'. 'e..ana' *can* refer to the past
despite the
'e'. Used alone, usually only in story-telling - 'ana' [sometimes
'ka ..
ana' in some dialects] refers to past time, 'e' to future [never
present]
time. I think 'ana' is used mainly with the passive, but may be
wrong on
that. You cannot use 'i ... ana' to refer to past imperfect actions
as in
English "I was walking" as 'i' is used to mark time without aspect.
In
eastern dialects 'e... ana' is usually replace by 'kei [present
position] te
[def. art.]...' and that has a past form 'i [past position] te ...',
but
then you have a nominal [or pseudo-verbal as it is usually called]
construction. Despite 'kei' meaning 'present position' it can have
future
meaning.

Ka ... = beginning of new action - 'inceptive' ( but translating as
"began
to ..." is wrong most of the time) [... = position of 'verb']
Kua ... = complete action or completed state - perfect/ive [but also
implies
recent past if used of the past - in Hawai'ian it is 'ua and is
inceptive
(replacing 'ka') as often as perfect/ive]
E ... ana = imperfect/ive
I ... = past action
E ... = future action
... ana = past action

Ka is the most commonly used, and has neither tense nor aspect
Kua cannot always be replaced by 'e ... ana' to make the change from
perfect
to imperfect. Sometimes 'i' is necessary when the imperfect [e...
ana] is
cancelled, and 'ka' must be used if the perfect aspect [kua] is to be
cancelled. There is no way of indicating present tense as opposed to
past
or future. And ... ana seems to be used only with passive forms, not
active
[although my limited knowledge may be misleading me on that].

How do you make sense out of this - i.e. present it as a system?? No
form
of verb contrasts with another, but all allow different aspects of the
action/state to be emphasised. There is not a perfect/imperfect
distinction
as you cannot use the imperfect in all the situations you can use
the
perfect or vice versa. Can you speak of a tense distinction when
there is
no 'present' - although there is a past and in some situations a
future -
and the conditions under which 'i' and 'e' can be used overlap only
in a
minor way? I am not sure you can talk of states in terms of tense at
all.
While all the Polynesian languages differ greatly in the particles
they use
and there is no way of equating the use of any particle in one with a
particular particle in another, all share this confusing
charateristic of
not being able to oppose one form to another in the way that you can
past/present/future in tense based languages or perfect/imperfect in
aspect
based languages. Perhaps neither tense not aspect are the basis for
the
system of forms. I am not sure applying your tests help to any
greater
degree than the traditional definitions in explaining how the system
works.
When you consider that the passive is the preferred form of the verb,
that
adjectives and nouns, verbs and adverbs are often distinguished only
when a
particle is added, and that the use of the articles is still a
mystery even
to native speakers [i.e they know when to use which form, but have no
idea
of why apart from 'that's just the way it has always been'], perhaps
your
colleague's comment about abandoning traditional European definitions
needs
to be applied more widely than just to aspect. The Pacific languages
[Austronesian, Indo-Pacific and Australian, each in their own ways]
have not
been kind to European linguistic theories - perhaps that may partly
even the
score where we lost out in other areas :)

Kevin Riley








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