Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Peter,

Please see my comments below.

----- 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 3:36 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verbal Aspect (was Tenses - Deut 6:4)


> On 07/03/2007 14:52, Rolf Furuli wrote:
>
> > ... This is what all linguists know and ordinary persons understand (but 
> > they do not describe it by the help of grammatical terminology): The past 
> > reference of some English verbs is sometimes connected with the verb 
> > form, in other cases it is dependent on the context. As linguists we must 
> > be ready to show why we say that "walked" has an intrinsic past tense 
> > while that is not the case with "walking".
> Rolf, I accept that this is in general true of these examples in English, 
> although even so the tense is not completely uncancellable as I showed a 
> few days ago. I do not accept that that implies that the same is 
> necessarily true of all verb form distinctions in all languages at all 
> stages of their diachronic development. After all, if there is any truth 
> in the theory that Hebrew (and Arabic) changed from an aspectual system to 
> a tense-based one, there must have been at least a short period during 
> which mother tongue speakers were uncertain or had different opinions 
> about whether certain distinctions were ones of tense or aspect. And there 
> is no compelling reason why such a situation might not continue for a long 
> period.

Fine! Then, once more to the point: Regardless of the diachronic evolution 
of the language, we have a text, namely the Masoretic one and the DSS. David 
has claimed that the WAYYIQTOLs of this text represent past tense. Then it 
is fully legitimate to ask on the basis which criteria he has concluded that 
the WAYYIQTOLs represent past tense, and the same is not true with other 
verb forms which refer to past completed events. The case is  just as simple 
as that.

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
> --
> Peter Kirk
> E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
> Blog:    http://www.qaya.org/blog/
> Website: http://www.qaya.org/