Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 07/03/2007 11:09, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> 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. ...

Rolf, I'm sorry, but I don't know this, neither as a linguist nor as an 
ordinary person, and I do dispute it. As an ordinary person, I have no 
conscious understanding of any distinctions of this sort, I simply use 
and understand verbs and other parts of language. As a linguist, I am 
aware that in some languages in many circumstances there are clear 
distinctions of this kind, but I am also aware of examples where there 
is no clear distinction, such as where a verb form which ordinarily has 
a past meaning (in a loose sense of the word) can also be used in a 
non-past way.

Your appeal to "All linguists know, and ordinary people know..." is a 
double logical fallacy. The first, "All linguists know...", is an appeal 
to authority fallacy, see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority. The second, "ordinary 
people know..." and repeated in "this is a fact that no one would 
dispute" (even if these statements were true, which I don't accept), is 
an "Argumentum ad populum" fallacy, see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum. You have to prove 
things like this, not assume them. If your theoretical model assumes 
them, then it is an inadequate model.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://www.qaya.org/blog/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/