Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Hi George,

Thanks for your reply and continuing discussion.

A bit of clarification: I am not against an aspectual understanding of 
the BH verbal system per se. I think it quite clear that Hebrew moved 
from aspect to tense (see eg Andersen's 2000 ZAH article; John Cook's 
dissertation; etc). The debate is really where to position BH on this 
continuum. A primarily aspectual view of the verbal system is, in my 
opinion, unable to explain: a) declarative non-stative qatal default is 
absolute past; b)default anterior use of qatal in non-paratactic 
constructions; c) rhetorical/exaggerated "futures" with qatal (eg Isa 
6:5); d) qatal for politeness (eg 1Kgs 15:19); e) qatal restricted in 
its use to the temporal modifiers 'ethmol/'emesh; f) yiqtol restricted 
in its use to the temporal modifiers `attah/machar. It is often asked 
that how can a so-called primarily tense marking form be used in all 
temporal spheres? (eg Waltke & O'Connor). However, a tense analysis is 
able to cope with this; see, eg, Rogland's monograph, Anstey's 
dissertation. However, the question can actually be framed the other way 
around, ie, how can so-called primarily aspect marking forms be used for 
both aspects? I say this because yiqtol, which is supposedly 
imperfective aspect, can be used perfectively (eg Gen 18:11) and qatal, 
which is supposedly perfective aspect, can be used imperfectively (eg 
Gen 38:9; Num 11:8; 21:9; Jud 2:18; 6:3; 2 Kgs 18:4). It is these types 
of issues which I have yet to see an aspectual analysis tackle. (I would 
love to be proved wrong on this and be pointed to the relevant literature.)

(As for Koine Greek, that's another matter entirely. I'd be interesting 
in having a look at Campbell's work when it comes out. Rodney Decker has 
a monograph making much the same claims, but in my opinion ends up with 
his findings due to the adoption of a faulty linguistic methodology at 
the start.)

Now concerning your proposal of a spatial aspect approach to the BH 
verbal system: is it that you see the "spatial" deriving form aspect, or 
something else? If the answer is "from something else" then that might 
be fine. But if you see the "spatial" derived from aspect then 
typologically this is questionable: spatial conceptualisation of verbal 
action is cross-linguistically derived from tense, not aspect.

Regards,
David Kummerow.

> Hi David!
>
> Firstly, thanks for keeping me on my toes. Your observations are, as usual,
> astute.
>
> Yes, you are right to say that 'some' research points towards verbal 
> aspect.
> However, the interesting thing I am finding is that people working
> independently of each other are coming up with similar conclusions 
> regarding
> verbal aspect. This, of course, does not mean that it is correct, but it
> does mean it is worth investigating.
>
> As for your query from 2005 (sorry, didn't realise I had not answered): 
> I do
> not think that time is grammaticalised in Biblical Hebrew. Time is, from
> what I can see, indicated by context and/or deictic markers. As such, I do
> see verbal aspect being grammaticalised in the construction of verb forms.
> Is this unique to Biblical Hebrew? No, I don't think so. Con Campbell has
> just completed a dissertation on verbal aspect in Koine Greek, and comes up
> with very similar conclusions to the ones I'm making in Biblical Hebrew (it
> should be published in the very near future). Of course this does open the
> need to investigate whether verbal aspect is a feature of other Semitic
> languages, especially close cognates of Biblical Hebrew. My suspicion (and
> this is purely speculative), is that verbal aspect began to die as ancient
> societies became more dependent on written records and those records were
> kept indefinitely. Time, I suspect, became a governing factor. Nonetheless,
> that speculation needs to be tested.
>
> There is still a long way to go on this whole question, but so far the
> explanatory power of verbal aspect is, in my opinion, quite impressive for
> both Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek -- enough to make for a working
> hypothesis.
>
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> GEORGE ATHAS
> Moore Theological College (Sydney)
> 1 King St, Newtown, NSW 2042, Australia
> Ph: (+61 2) 9577 9774