Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 28/03/2007 11:10, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> ...
> > Karl's approach to lexicography may perhaps be seen as analogous to
> > Rolf's work on the verbal system. Their approach assumes that there is
> > something uncancellable between every occurrence of a lexical item in
> > Karl's case and every occurrence of a verb form in Rolf's.
> >     
>
> You are wrong again! I cannot understand how you can write the above words
> if you really have read my dissertation. I definitely do not believe "there
> is something uncancellable...in...every occurence of a verb form". The very 
> opposite is true!
>   

Would the following statement be more accurate: "Their approach assumes 
that there is something uncancellable between ... every occurrence of a 
verb TENSE in Rolf's"? And since you find no evidence of anything 
uncancellable in the Hebrew verb system, you conclude that Hebrew verb 
forms are not tenses?
...
> I supply two examples from C. Smith  "A Parameter of Aspect" (1991:149) in
> order to illustrate my view of semantic meaning:
>
> 1) John has arrived.
>
> 2) #John has arrived yesterday.
>
> There are no problems with 1), but 2) is ungrammatical, since Perfect
> sentences with specifying adverbials du not appear in English. From this I
> draw the conclusion that there is an intrinsic property of the Perfect verb
> that forbids it to be used with adverbials signifying the past, and that
> this property cannot be cancelled by the context. This is "semantic meaning"
> as I define it. This property is not found in preterit verbs.
>
>   
Well, you have a point that there is a different distribution of 
adverbials with these different verb forms, in English as with 
comparable examples in Hebrew (at least as far as we can tell from the 
limited evidence which we have). But it is not true that "there is an 
intrinsic property of the Perfect verb that forbids it to be used with 
adverbials signifying the past, and that this property cannot be 
cancelled by the context". Consider the following sentence, which I am 
sure that the mother tongue English speakers on this list (certainly 
those of British English) will agree is natural:

3) John has arrived on time every day for the last month.

"For the last month" is clearly an adverbial "signifying the past", but 
when the context also includes "every day", making this into a repeated 
action, cancels the normal property that past adverbials are not used 
with the perfect. I note that the following is also grammatical:

4) John arrived on time every day for the last month.

but differs in that, unlike 3, it implies that this habit has been 
broken or is not expected to continue. Rolf, English is much more subtle 
than you seem to imagine! And so, probably, is Hebrew.

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