Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Yitzhak,

As a description for my students I can say with reference to a 
particular text: This text  is narrative.  Yet the text may contain 
verbs in succession with past reference, direct speech and other 
forms of speech.
When I speak of "narrative" where verbs per definition have past 
reference, I speak of texts where each verb follow another verb in 
consecution without breaks.

We are now deviating from the central issue, and I see no reason to continue.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> >  Dear Yitzhak,
> >
> >  Communication is not always easy, and either I have not expressed my
> >  points clearly enough, or you have misunderstood something.
> >
> >  The points I tried to convey were:
> >
> >  1. Verbs in real narratives must per definition have past reference
> >  (not past tense). David Crystal (2001) "Dictionary of Linguistics and
> >  Phonetics" has the following definition: "A narrative is seen as a
> >  recapitulation of past experience in which language is used to
> >  structure a sequence of (real of fictitious ) events". So Crystal
> >  agrees that narrative verbs have past reference.
>
> Dear Rolf,
>
> While I accept Crystal's definition, I think one has to separate between
> past experience and past reference.  David Crystal himself knows
> about "past reference" but he does not use the term here.  Therefore,
> it is inaccurate to attribute to Crystal agreement that the narrative
> has past reference.  Also, in the sentence you quote above, verbs are
> not discussed at all.  So it is also inaccurate to attribute to the verbs
> past reference.
>
> Specifically, Comrie explicitly says (Tense, on p. 62-63 that I provided
> in the earlier message) that a narrative may make use of relative
> present time reference: "...[We] have claimed that the meaning of
> of the English present participle is relative present time reference ...
> thus the present participle in narrative sequence is interpreted as
> simultaneous with the current reference point defined by the next
> verb/event in the narrative sequence."
>
> >  2. There may be properties of the narrative sequence itself that can
> >  not be ascribed to the verbs. The consequence of this is that while a
> >  narrative verb has past reference, it need not have an intrinsic past
> >  tense.
>
> Comrie could have taken the easy way out and said that because
> the present participle is used here in a narrative, we cannot tell its
> meaning and we must look for other examples.  But he did not.  He
> evidently believes the meaning can be discerned even though we
> have a narrative before us.  Anyway, Comrie does not say that a
> narrative verb has past reference, but rather that a narrative verb
> may have non-past reference.
>
> >  No one would for example say that the infinitive absolutes
> >  that are the narrative verbs in Phoenician have an intrinsic past
> >  tense. I would say that in BH it is basically the prefixed
> >  conjunction WAW to the prefix verbs that signal the past reference
> >  and not the verb form itself; "She did that, and she did that, and
> >  she did that.
>
> >  Both points above accords with Comrie's views.
>
> I don't see that.  Comrie says that normally non-past reference verbs
> maintain their time reference even in narratives.  You seem to suggest
> that somehow they must gain past reference because they are in
> narratives.
>
> The link from before:
> http://books.google.com/books?id=KmFMW40zyFcC&pg=PA62&dq=crossing
>
> > > So in the following:
> > > >   Comrie does not discuss WAYYIQTOL but the relative time reference in
> > > >   narrative. But an important point is that he shows that a verb form
> > > >   may be given a particular meaning in a narrative. But this meaning
> > > >   need not be an intrinsic part of the verb form but rather an
> > > >   implicature from the narrative itself (the context), Comrie's words
> > > >   in an excellent way illustrate my distinction between semantics and
> > > >   pragmatics. And they also imply that the verb forms used in narrative
>  >>>  contexts can have different meanings. For example, any verb form used
> > >   > in narratives *must* per definition have past reference.
>
> Again, Comrie does not say that any verb form in narratives "*must*"
> per definition have past reference.  I don't know where you are getting
> this because Comrie seems to say quite the opposite.
>
> > > The above, specifically the last two sentences, appears to misread into
> > > Comrie the exact position that he argues against -- that verb tenses in
> > > narrative receive a different tense due to their use in a narrative context.
> >
> >  No you are wrong
>
> Could you elaborate?  Could you give an example of where Comrie does
> say a verb must have past reference if it is used in narrative?  Why does
> Comrie go to this whole explanation of justifying his belief in a pure
> relative present reference of the participle in a narrative context if he
> thinks that the verb has past reference in a narrative context regardless
> of its intrinsic verb form?
>
> > > So while many linguists probably would agree with Comrie, I doubt most
> > > linguists would accept that an imperfective verb form can be used in
> > > narrative contexts.  In any case, without a cross-linguistic analysis like
> > > Comrie's, and without having examples of the use of imperfective
> > > aspects in narrative contexts in living languages which have perfective/
> > > imperfective distinctions, it is very hard to see how an argument could
> > > be made for Biblical Hebrew to have such uses.
> >
> >  The arguments above are very dangerous linguistically speaking. Each
> >  language must be analyzed in its own right, and it is fallacious to
> >  analyze dead languages in the light of living ones. There are more
> >  than 20 different analyses of perfective and imperfective aspects, so
> >  which one should we choose?
>
> Actually, I think it is fallacious and dangerous to do otherwise.  You can
> suggest particular meanings for Hebrew verb forms but without native
> speakers you have no way to know if that is indeed what they intend.
> If a certain use of the verb in a hypothetical unattested case is acceptable
> or not.  At least, if you have a cross linguistic comparison from another
> living language you can go ahead and show that it is possible to have
> had such an interpretation.  Knowing that something is possible but not
> knowing if it is right is slightly better than not knowing whether it is
> possible or right.  Furthermore, if there are no cross linguistic
> comparisons with living languages you have essentially a large ad-hoc
> assumption regarding Hebrew.  It is all very unsound.
>
> >  As for a cross-linguistic analysis, we have exactly the same
> >  phenomena in Aramaic, Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Akkadian as in
> >  Hebrew, the same verb form can be used with past, present, and future
> >  meaning.
>
> And if you have such widespread attestation, it is all the more important
> to show these phenomena in Arabic, Neo-Aramaic and Ethiopic.  Otherwise,
> it suggests that you are reading into the dead languages things that are
> not there -- that whereas in the living languages speakers exist to tell
> you when you're wrong, in the dead languages, without speakers, there
> is simply no one alive to tell you you're wrong.
>
> I note that some of the same concepts were raised by Peter Kirk 10 years
> ago:
> https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew/1999-October/004532.html
>
> I am retracting my issue with the use of imperfective in narrative.  But I
> see no place where Comrie suggests that verbs lose their tense/aspect
> in a narrative.  Everything I read in Comrie goes against this assertion.
>
> Yitzhak Sapir
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