Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear David,

I have the following questions:

1) Which verb in Gen 18:11 do you have in mind?

2) What actually is a "complete" action? How is such an action different 
from a "completed" action?

3) How can we know that the opposition "complete and undifferentiated" 
versus "incomplete and differentiated" can be applied to Hebrew aspects?

4) Are aspects in all aspectual languages exactly the same, "complete and 
undifferentiated versus incomplete and differentiated"? How can we know the 
answer?


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli Ph.D
University of Oslo

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Kummerow" <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2007 3:23 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verbal Aspect (was Tenses - Deut 6:4)


> Hi Rolf,
>
> I take it that the perfective :: imperfective opposition is one of
> grammatical/inflectional aspect vis-a-vis lexical Aktionsart. Perfective
> aspect covers the range of actions conceptualised as complete and
> undifferentiated; imperfective aspect covers the range of actions
> conceptualised as incomplete and differentiated.
>
> If these definitions are acceptable, the prefix verb in Gen 18:11 would
> refer to a perfective action. And in the other references, the suffix
> verbs would be used of imperfective actions.
>
> Regards,
> David Kummerow.