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

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  • From: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verbal Aspect (was Tenses - Deut 6:4)
  • Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 11:23:20 +1100

I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment.

The problem as I see it with most treatments of the verbal system is that they insufficiently reckon with the shifting nature of the verbal system. That is, if we are correct in seeing a continuum from aspect-only-marking to tense-only-marking, most treatments seem to place the language as at entirely one end of the spectrum. The issue appears to be black-and-white for them and either-or, when in fact there would seem to be elements of truth to both: Hebrew moves from aspect-marking (so the aspectual treatments) to tense-marking (so the tense-marking treatments). For BH, we would appear to be in an intermediate stage, so either aspect-prominent (not aspect-only) or tense-prominent (not tense-only). (There is, however, a third "modality-prominent" option, but I leave that aside here.)

Regards,
David Kummerow.


On 08/03/2007 23:10, David Kummerow wrote:
> Hi Karl,
>
> I agree.
>
> The point I wished to make was simply that there are exceptions for the
> aspect-only view to deal with. You have conceded this, I think.
> Similarly, there are exceptions for the tense-only view to deal with. If
> this is the scenario, could it be that BH does note COMPLETELY
> grammaticalise either? That is, is it possible for BH to be on the way
> to grammaticalising tense? Hence all the debate where both sides have
> latched onto part of the picture but perhaps not the entire picture? I
> prefer to see the language as tense-prominent rather than tense-only or
> aspect-only.
>
>
It strikes me that there are very good reasons for a language to be, and
remain fairly stably, in some mixture of tense-prominent and
aspect-prominent. Efficient human communication needs to specify both
tense and aspect, but certain combinations of these are more common than
others. One strategy which some languages use, like Russian, and to a
large extent Greek and English, is to have separate mechanisms for
indicating tense and indicating aspect, allowing for a two-dimensional
set of verb forms. But in Hebrew and other Semitic languages there are
not two separate morphological or syntactic ways of distinguishing tense
and aspect, and so the limited number of possible variations are
distributed across the common combinations of tense and aspect, in a way
which is not as neat and logical as the Russian system, or for that
matter the English one. But the system does seem to work, although there
does seem to have been a slow long term shift from what may well have
been an originally completely aspectual system to the completely
tense-based system of later Hebrew.






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