Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Dear Rolf, Peter, David, et al.:

I have been lurking on this thread, now to add my 2¢.

While I agree with Rolf that there is no evidence of
grammaticalization of tense in Biblical Hebrew, there is yet a
psychological component to aspect, by which the narrator will tend to
use the complete aspect to refer to the past, and the incomplete or
completing aspect for the future. The major exception is where the
completing aspect is used to complete (carry forward) a narration
referring to the past. The complete aspect can be used for a future
event, where the expectation is that the event will happen once and
once only, otherwise the narrator will psychologically prefer to use
the incomplete aspect as the event has at that time not yet been
completed.

While psychological preferences are not in themselves
grammaticalization, they can give the appearance of such, hence
David's claim.

Strict grammar is one thing, but when analyzing written texts, we
should not ignore the psychological element also involved with
language use.

Karl W. Randolph.

On 3/7/07, Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org> wrote:
...
> I agree that this is a reasonable question. But did David in fact say
> that "the same is not true with other verb forms which refer to past
> completed events", or is his definition of "past tense" just something
> like "verb forms which refer to past completed events"? The latter
> definition might be somewhat fuzzy, but it might also fit real language
> better than the very precise definition which you insist on.
>
> ...
>
> --
> Peter Kirk
> E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
> Blog:    http://www.qaya.org/blog/
> Website: http://www.qaya.org/