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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: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:57:46 +1000


Hi Randall,

You get no disagreement from me as I think you are correct in your contention that the participle is the prototypical way of referring to the present in direct speech in BH. The number of features in the language which point to a grammaticalization of aspect to tense lead me to say that the verbal system is tense-prominent rather than aspect-prominent, though the shift has not completely occurred. (As you show in your Living Biblical Hebrew for Everyone, there are some aspectual occurrences which cannot be taken as indicating tense.)

Regards,
David Kummerow.


After another set of six comments, it is probably useful to re-orient
back to the original issue. None of the comments proposed
a YIQTOL example in an actual, positive, real, present reference,
(yes, given a strict set of parameters to insure that we are
comparing a few apples to a few apples)
though one comment assured that such was 'accurate', and another
seemed to imply that the vayyiqtol was effictively a present tense. If the
latter, then one wonders what distinguishes vayyiqtol +Subject from
ve-Subject+qotel, or even ve-qotel Subject? But that would need to
be a different thread.

Let's keep looking for some bonafide examples
of present yiqtol without outside contingencies. The kind that
Hebrew profs keep giving me like:

* er'e et ha-`ets sham *"I see the tree there"

Again, look at this the other way around:
What if I had a class and was saying to a standing student

* ta`amod sham vaani e`mod po
as if to say * "you're standing there and I'm standing here"

I would have hoped that people would have jumped all over me and
said
'show us some good examples for the kind of Hebrew you're teaching!'
(they sure do that fast when they hear participles !
"I get slandered, libeled, I hear words I never heard in the Bible")

Instead, it may be that people are looking from a 'leaning tower of pisa'
so that if I would lean with them they would say
'you're standing straight'.

But I'm sensitive to gravity and want to stand straight.

blessings
Randall Buth






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