Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

>  > 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.

Hi Stephen,

You raise the exact same point as the thrust of the criticism of Rolf's 
position in my review. This is exactly what I've been trying to get Rolf 
and Karl to front up to, viz. the pervasive multifunctionality in 
language and how rigidly and arbitrarily defining semantics as 
uncancellable meaning cannot deal with this characteristic of language. 
But the issue is always dodged.

It's interesting that you suggest Rolf has forced Comrie into saying 
what he didn't and wouldn't say. I found the same type of 
misrepresentation of Hatav's monograph. Rolf criticised Hatav that 
exceptions remained to her position regarding WAYYIQTOL, and that, 
because of this, what she had found couldn't possibly be the semantics 
of WAYYIQTOL. Rolf does not admit that Hatav herself was aware of the 
exceptions and that exceptions to her position wasn't necessarily a 
problem. That is, Hatav wasn't defining semantics as uncancellable 
meaning and so her analysis could tolerate some exceptions -- yet Rolf 
criticised her on this very point saying she hadn't dealt with the 
exceptions!

Regards,
David Kummerow.