Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Stephen Shead <srshead+bh AT gmail.com>]

Dear Rolf,

A: I'm going to drive to work.
>> B: If you walked, you would be helping the environment.
>>
>> For "walked", the deictic centre is the present moment, and the reference
>> time is future - though strictly speaking, it's a future moment in one of
>> several possible "worlds" or mental spaces (one which seems not very
>> likely).
>>
>
> RF:
>
> In B. Comrie (1985) "Tense" p. 9, we find the definition of tense as
> "grammaticalized location in time". On pp. 18-19 Comrie discusses examples
> of the use of past tense that seemingly contradicts the view that in past
> tense reference time comes before the deictic center. He mentions
> counterfactuals and polite expressions. But as Comrie said, and we all know,
> there can be special uses of grammatical categories. But that does not
> invalidate the fact that tenses exist, and that they are expressed by
> particular forms.
> ...
> The fact that tenses may have special uses is of course a complicating
> factor in the analysis of a dead language.
>

I'm not sure Comrie supports your overall position on tense - or at least,
Comrie's position seems to me to be more flexible than yours. To quote him:

"The approach followed in this book does ... retain the distinction between
a context-independent meaning and interpretation fostered by specific
contexts ... However, it is acknowledged that a given grammatical category
may have *more than one meaning* (it is thus logically possible that the
auxiliary *will* in English might have both temporal and modal meanings);
that a grammatical category may have a basic meaning and a number of
peripheral meanings or uses (where these are *not predictable* from the
interaction of basic meaning and context); and that the basic meaning of a
lexical item may be definable in terms of a prototype, i.e. in terms of the
most characteristic instance, rather than in terms of
necessary-and-sufficient conditions." (p. 19, emphasis added)

Note in particular his affirmation that the peripheral meanings not be
predictable from the basic meaning + context; i.e. to use your hard-and-fast
distinction, we are talking about semantics, not simply pragmatics. So the
"special uses" you talk of cannot necessarily be palmed off as "pragmatics".
Comrie does not do so.

On my example, you said:


> RF:

I suggest the following test: Start with a group of ten person and expand it
> to one thousand persons. Show them the word  "walked" and "went" without a
> context. and ask for an analysis. I am quite certain that all the native
> speakers would say that both are past tense. A context is not needed for
> such a conclusion.


Of course they would. This is simply identifying the "basic meaning", in
Comrie's terms - though I prefer, in line with cognitive linguists, to talk
of the "default construal" (see, e.g., Croft and Cruse 2004, pp. 101-104).
Default construal is precisely the meaning which is evoked for a native
speaker in a minimal context environment.

But if you were to do your little test, then follow up their answer with my
example above, I am equally certain they would say, "Oh, but that is talking
about the future, not the past." In other words, the English simple past
form is polysemous, and the reference time of the less common modal meaning
is mutually exclusive with the reference time of the default construal. And
I take it this has nothing to do with a diachronic shift in English from
tense to mood. (BTW, it is simply standard English grammar to observe the
polysemy of the *-ed* form. I am not proposing anything new or
controversial.)

I'm happy to rephrase my main conclusion so as not to get tangled in
arguments over the meaning of the word "tense":
(1) In a language with a past tense verb form, it is possible for there to
be linguistic contexts in which this form is not used with past reference;
indeed, this form may have other "semantic meanings" which do not primarily
express time.

If this is not the case, please explain how, in my example, the reference
time for "walked" is in the past with respect to the deictic centre. (Does
this then have implications for a theory of "uncancellable meaning" in the
English simple past conjugation?)

My question, then, was to what extent you might have considered that
WAYYIQTOL (or any other verbal conjugation, for that matter) might
have *multiple,
mutually exclusive* meanings: principally as a past tense, but possibly with
quite different meaning(s) in other grammatical contexts, as with English *
-ed*.

Thank you for explaining your methodology further ... though I was left a
little uncertain of the answer. One of your initial assumptions seems to be
that a given verb form must have uniform temporal reference to qualify as a
tense. I have tried to demonstrate that this is not the case - especially
when, as in the case of English *-ed*, the vast majority of instances do
have the same temporal reference.

On the other hand, you indicated that you did consider that non-past
WAYYIQTOLs could be explained as "exceptions" (for pragmatic or
diachronic/grammaticalization reasons). I would have to read your thesis to
assess this properly.

Given that this conversation seems to have centred on my English example and
theoretical presuppositions rather than on BH per se, I'm happy to leave it
there. I still have no idea whether this has any impact on WAYYIQTOL!
(Though I suspect it does in the case of YIQTOL.) I've expressed my argument
as clearly as I can, and if you still reject my conclusions, I guess we'll
agree to disagree.

Regards,
Stephen Shead
Centro de Estudios Pastorales
Santiago, Chile