Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear David,

Please see my comments below.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Kummerow" <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 12:51 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verbal Aspect (was Tenses - Deut 6:4)


> Hi Rolf,
>
> You assert that "an aspectual explanation on the basis of the
> relationship between event time and reference time can solve everything".

RF
The general word "everything" was meant to signal that all the uses of verbs
in the Tanakh can be explained without a single exception by the
two-component model presented in my dissertation. In the last chapter, I 
discuss this from the point of view of the Philosophy of Science. When 
definitions can explain every use, they either are too vague (thus 
explaining nothing) or they are close to outlining the true nature of the 
system.
> An observation: You, Rogland, and Cook all provide analyses making use
> of "speech time", "event time", and "reference time", yet you all arrive
> at vastly different conclusions. So an "explanation on the basis of the
> relationship between event time and reference time" may not necessarily
> "solve everything". I feel that since you all differ that there may
> still be some sort of (subjective?) interpretation of the data which
> leads to your respective differing positions.

RF
I found Cook´s dissertation to be of a very high quality, while I have more 
reservations regarding Rogland´s work, along the lines of Tropper´s recent 
review of it (I do not remeber the periodical). It is for example very 
interesting to compare their different view of QATAL/WEQATAL. While we use 
some parameters with the same name, our approaches are very different, so we 
should not expect to get the same results. Please note that do not claim 
that my conclusions are the truth and nothing but the truth. We never reach 
a final stage in the study of a dead language. The advantage of my study is 
that it is the only one where all finite and infinite verbs (save a few 
representing textual uncertainties of breaks) of classical Hebrew (the 
Tanakh, the DSS, Ben Sira, and the inscriptions) are analysed. It represents 
a new approach, since it does not build on the usual assumptions, but 
instead uses language-independent parameters in order to find what the text 
says, instead of forcing obsolete definitions upon the text. It is also the 
only study of Hebrew verbs which systematically has tried to distinguish 
between semantic and pragmatic factors, i.e., which parts of the forms have 
an intrinsic uncancellable meaning and which parts take their meaning from 
the context.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
>