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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] How does biblical Hebrew describe a present event?

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  • From: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] How does biblical Hebrew describe a present event?
  • Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:18:12 +1000


Hi George,

The situation with a verbal system is often not a simple as you suggest. It is not simply the presence vs absence of tense-marking morphemes which creates tensed vs non-tensed distinctions, but also the wider constructional and paradigmatic inventory. That is, some languages such as English require a morpheme in the present tense indicating such. Others use tensed morphemes only outside the present tense, with the present tense using no morpheme as such. Others grammaticalize a nonverbal copula morpheme in the present from third-person pronouns and demonstratives. (See further Leon Stassen, _Intransitive Predication_.)

What this means is that your hypothesis that the verbless clause in BH is a non-tensed construction due to the absence of a tense-indicating morpheme is premature. The hypothesis needs to be additionally situated in the wider paradigmatic structure of the language.

Regards,
David Kummerow.


I agree with you in large part, Naama. Tense is indicated mostly by the deictic markers in the clause - that is, those elements that are not part of the verb, but which indicate something about the circumstance and context of the verb.

I think that tense is, ultimately, an unhelpful category that we European-language speakers have unhelpfully imposed onto Semitic languages. Yes, we need to think about tense in the process of translation, since our European-based languages employ tense as a basic communicative category. However, I don't think biblical Hebrew has tense, and therefore when trying to understand biblical Hebrew on its own terms, it gets in the way.

Both the simple noun clause and the participial clause are verbless clauses - there is nothing there to indicate tense. Hebrew is simply making basic equative statements in these cases: X = /X/. I would argue that since biblical Hebrew works on essentially presenting mainline actions to be viewed 'live', that present tense is usually inferred from verbless clauses because the reader is 'in the moment' of the text.

BTW - great to 'see' you here!


Regards,

GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au






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