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  • From: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs
  • Date: Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:45:58 +1000

Hi Rolf,

>
>
>His definitions are so elastic that he can even say on p.438 that
>perfective and imperfective aspect is "not mutually exclusive" and that
>"if an overall picture [in any given context] is enough, different forms
>can be used with the same meaning" (p. 460)! To me, this just shows that
>the definitions are inappropriate. But when it comes down to actual
>details of the text, even these elastic definitions don't always work
>either -- wayyo'mer in Gen 12:1 being an example, which Rolf has so far
>dodged in showing how this can be taken as imperfective.
>
>snip
>
>Now, please show me how wayyo'mer in Gen 12:1 is imperfective.

The question above has been repeated five times or more in different
posts of DK. My answer that it is not possible in many verbs,
including this one, to see the relationship between reference time
and event time, has been ignored. That is not fair!

Then this just means that you read back the meaning of the minority of uses into the majority of uses. But how do we know that the semantic meaning of the majority of uses wasn't in part cancelled to allow for the minority of uses? How do we know that the meaning found in the minority of uses is also by default to be attributed to the majority of uses. Here work on frequency in linguistics would tell against your position as I argued in my review.


A few questions:

1) As I already have mentioned, S. R. Driver's view was that the
verb of Genesis 12:1 was imperfective, "he proceeded to speak". How
can we know that Driver was wrong, and that the WAYYIQTOL of the
verse "looks at the situation from the outside, without necessarily
distinguishing any of the internal structure of the situation"?

Context has no interrupted speech event, hence we can assume the whole of the speech event is on view and not a part. Put another way, how do we know its imperfective but from the minority of uses being read back into the majority?


2) Is my definition more "elastic" or "vague" (that DK said
elsewhere) than Comrie's? (Please note that I give a lot of details
explaining the definition.)

RF:

"The imperfective aspect is a close-up view of a small section of the
event where the progressive action is made visible. The perfective
aspect is a view, as if from some distance, of a great part of, or of
the whole of the event, where the progressive action is not made visible."

Comrie:

"The perfective looks at the situation from the outside, without
necessarily distinguishing any of the internal structure of the
situation, whereas the imperfective looks at the situation from inside,
and as such is crucially concerned with the internal structure of the
situation."

3) I am criticized by DK for by the words: "that he can even say on p.438 that
perfective and imperfective aspect is "not mutually exclusive". But
would not those saying that the aspects are mutually exclusive say
that they have uncancellable meaning? If they do not have a fixed
meaning that cannot change, how can they be mutually exclusive? In
one place I am criticized because I say that something has semantic
meaning, and in another context because I am not claiming semantic
meaning.

It is elastic in the sense that, for example, your perfective aspect can correspond at times to what under a traditional definition corresponds to imperfective. I see that you have to have this elastic definition so that you have a chance of trying to achieve an uncancellable meaning across all of the occurrences of the verbs in the corpus.



Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


Regards,
David Kummerow.




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