Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Peter,

Here you completely miss the mark!  The point is as follows: All linguists 
know, and ordinary people know that some verbs can refer to the past because 
the verb forms themselves have an intrinsic past tense, and other verbs can 
in one context refer to the past and in other contexts to the future. This 
is absolutely not theory-dependent, since this is a fact that no one would 
dispute. ( I am here speaking about how languages work, and not about the 
theoretical psychological discussion of the relationship between time and 
tense.) When the term "preterit" or "past tense" is used, it implies that 
the form in question represents "grammaticalised past location in time", but 
when the expression "past reference" is used, it implies that the situation 
is past without deciding whether this is due to the form itself or to the 
context.

When David claims that WAYYIQTOL represents past tense, he should be able to 
demonstrate the basis for this and also show that other forms with past 
reference either represent past tense or only context-dependent past 
reference. Tenses can be used in different ways in different contexts (e.g. 
modal use, conditional use etc.). But to claim that a  particular verb form 
in *most* cases represents past tense and in other cases represents future 
tense, the very opposite would be nonsensical. Either a language has tense 
forms or it has not.

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Kirk" <peter AT qaya.org>
To: "Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2007 9:53 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verbal Aspect (was Tenses - Deut 6:4)


> On 07/03/2007 07:59, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> > Dear David,
> >
> > You have not really answered my basic question, "How do we distinguish 
> > between past reference and past tense?"  Your comments show that your 
> > approach is completely theory-dependent. ...
>
> But, Rolf, your own question here is "completely theory-dependent". You 
> don't even ask the logically prior question whether there is a meaningful 
> distinction to be made between past reference and past tense, or whether 
> this distinction is part of David's theoretical framework. You simply 
> assume that this is the most basic distinction which must and can be made, 
> and then pressure David to make this distinction. But there are other 
> possible and meaningful theoretical frameworks in which there is no such 
> distinction, or in which this distinction is far less fundamental and less 
> significant. And anyway it may well be that, even if the distinction is a 
> valid one, the evidence from a dead language is insufficient for it to be 
> made in this case - which would imply that your model of the Hebrew verb 
> is a theoretically valid but practically unproductive one.
>
> --
> Peter Kirk
> E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
> Blog:    http://www.qaya.org/blog/
> Website: http://www.qaya.org/