Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Tense and aspect; was: "The use of "

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Tense and aspect; was: "The use of "
  • Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:36:46 +0200

Dear Jason,

It is important to distinguish between tense and time/temporal reference. All languages have different means to signal whether an action is past, present, or future. But first whenthe temporal refrence is an intrinsic part of a verb form, can we say that a language has tense. Therefore, tense is defined as "grammaticalized location in time". Burmese, for example, do not have tenses. In English the forms "went" and "spoke" are preterits, they have an intrinsic past reference. But not so with the participle walking in 1), 2), and 3) below. Each clause has a different temporal reference, but this reference is not an intrinsic part of "walking".

1) At present He is walking.
2) Tomorrow he will be walking.
3) Yesterday he was walking.

Classical Hebrew has different ways to signal temporal reference. The most important one, according to my analysis, is a narrative sequence of events, one event following the previous one, expressed by YIQTOLs with the prefixed conjunction WAW. These forms are often called "waw consecutive" or WAYYIQTOL. Narratives are by definition past, and regardless of which verb form is used in narratives, it has past reference. So the time markers in this case are the narrative setting plus the conjunction WAW, which moves the sequence of actions forward.

Please note that the WAYYIQTOL form also can have present and future reference, it can be modal, and the action of one WAYYIQTOL can occur at the same time as the action of the previous WAYYIQTOL. Moreover, the WAYYIQTOL can be conative, ingressive, progressive, egressive, and resultative, as other imperfective forms can. And it occurs in typical imperfective constructions such as, "When Jill entered the room, John was reading (WAYYIQTOL) the book.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


How common do you think it is for the understood/translated tense to
correlate with imperfect or perfect aspect? Is the correspondence
truly so trivial that (at the very least, in narrative) we cannot
assume any type of tense indication in the form? In my personal
reading, anyway, I don't see the problem in narrative with viewing
imperfect (and corresponding vav-conversives) and perfect (same)
simply being understood/assumed as future in tense.

In other words, there is nothing necessarily contextual that would
make me choose past tense in my translation of ÂÈýÓ¯ VY)MR on its own
in a simple sentence introducing some piece of speech. I mean, it
could just as well be future, telling me what someone WILL say. I know
it's kinda being absurd, but surely there is SOME TENSE FUNCTION
within the narrative flow, something above and beyond "aspect/Aspekt"
or perspective. I cannot help but feel that Hebrew (yes, Biblical
Hebrew) expresses tense quite naturally in most cases. In those which
are less straightforward, the aspectual features of the forms come
into play. For the vast majority of verbs, though, it seems rather
clear (again, in narrative).

I don't mean to argue the position. It just doesn't set well with me
to think that the language had nothing to indicate tense inherently in
the verb, when it is so naturally there in the majority of cases.

Regards,
Jason Hare
Rehovot, Israel

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 1:24 AM, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:

No. Unlike English and other Indo-European languages, Biblical Hebrew did
not express tenses through the form of the verb.


Context is the main and final arbiter.

Karl W. Randolph.
_______________________________________________
b-hebrew mailing list
b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page