Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

But surely you can see that the examples of the various uses of 'went' show
that neither tense nor aspect is uncancellable.

(1) Yesterday I went to the shop to buy a sandwich

This use shows past tense and perfective aspect

(2) Sally went to the shop every day of her life

This use is both referring to the past and is imperfective in aspect (action
was repeated)

(3) As I went to the shop I saw a man talking to a woman

This use is referring to the past and is imperfective in aspect (action is
ongoing). We can substitute 'went' with 'was going' with very little
difference to the logical inferences the utterance stimulates.

(4) If I went to the shop I would buy an ice-cream

This use is referring to hypothetical event in the future with perfective
aspect

(5) If I went to the shop every day like Sally does I'd soon get bored of
going to the shop

This use is referring to hypothetical events both past, present and future
that are repeated i.e. imperfective in aspect. If we changed this
conditional into logical inferences that could be made when its truth
conditions are satisfied one of the inferences we could make is 'I go to the
shop every day like Sally.' i.e. verb form becomes present simple
(expressing repeated actions in past, present and future; aspect is
therefore imperfective.

And so we can conclude that neither tense nor aspect is grammaticalised in
the English 'simple past' verb forms. However, what gains does this
knowledge give us when applying it to the task of translation (or machine
translation) from English to another modern language like Italian?

Here are the examples again. This time with their translations (any Italians
on the list please correct my translations if there are any mistakes in
them).

(1) Yesterday I went to the shop to buy a sandwich
Ieri sono andato al negozio (If a woman or girl is speaking)
Ieri sono andata al negozio (If a man or boy is speaking)
Ieri andai al negozio (if you are from far enough South in Italy to prefer
the use of passato remoto over passato prossimo in combination with Ieri
(yesterday)

(2) Sally went to the shop every day of her life

Sally andava al negozio tutti i giorni della vita

(3) As I went to the shop I saw a man talking to a woman

Come andavo al negozio ci ho visto un signore che stava a parlare con una
donna

(4) If I went to the shop I would buy an ice-cream

Se andassi al negozio comprerei un gelato (if you are an academic who
insists on speaking 'correct' Italian)
Se andavo al negosio compravo un gelato (if you just go with the flow and
speak like everyone else does)

(5) If I went to the shop every day like Sally does I'd soon get bored of
going to the shop

Se andassi io tutti i giorni al negozio come fa la Sally mi stufferrebbe in
fretta
Se andavo io tutti i giorni al negozio come fa la Sally mi stuffava in
fretta

And so we see a number of different verb forms being the natural translation
of English 'went' (passato prossimo, passato remoto, imperfetto,
congiuntivo). In each case it would seem that it is an alignment of the use
in question that dominates the translation rather than any idea of
uncancellable meaning of the verb form. Wouldn't you agree?

James Christian



2010/1/31 Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>

> >Dear James,
>
> If you read my dissertation, you may perhaps change your mind
> regarding the results of applying my model to different languages.
> Regarding English and Hebrew aspects, my conclusion is that Hebrew
> and English aspects have three similarities and three differences,
> and because the most important side is different, these aspects are
> very different. BTW, in my system English simple past is not an
> aspect but a tense; the perfective aspect in English is the perfect
> participle.
>
> If you apply my model to Classical Greek, the conclusion is that
> aorist represents only the perfective aspect and not past tense,
> while imperfect is a combination of the imperfective aspect and past
> tense.
>
> The characteristics of a language that lacks tense, is that all its
> finite verb forms in normal clauses (not hypothetical clauses) can be
> used for past, present, and future. This is true in Classical Hebrew,
> but not in Classical Greek, English, and Norwegian.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Rolf Furuli
> University of Oslo
>
>
>
> >
> >While I agree that Rolf's analysis of the verb forms has great value and
> has
> >inspired many people to start asking the right questions the main problem
> I
> >have with Rolf's method of analysis is this:
> >
> >If we were to employ the method used by Rolf to analyse verb forms I'm
> sure
> >that we would get pretty much the same results for every human language.
> >That is to say that we would conclude from the data that tense is not
> >grammaticalised in any verb forms of any language.
> >
> >e.g.
> >
> >Yesterday I went to the shop (unambiguous past, perfective aspect)
> >Sally went to the shop every day of her life (unambgiuous past,
> imperfective
> >aspect (repeated action)
> >As I went to the shop I saw a big fat bird eating rice (unambiguous past,
> >imperfective aspect (continuous action interrupted by a perfective
> action))
> >If I went to the shop I'd buy it for you (hypothetical future)
> >
> >Conclusion. Past tense is not grammaticalised in the English 'simple
> past'.
> >
> >And so this calls into question the value of Rolf's analysis for real
> world
> >tasks like translation. We could analyse the verb form 'went' for
> >uncancellable semantic meaning and get surprising results but for real
> world
> >tasks like translating the verb form 'went' into, say, Italian this
> >knowledge of itself would be of little use. The sentences above clearly
> show
> >several different uses of the verb form and to translate them properly it
> is
> >the usage of the verb which will likely dominate its translation.
> >
> >James Christian
> >
> >2010/1/31 K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
> >
> >>  Stoney:
> >>
> >>  On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 4:46 PM, s.a.breyer <s.a.breyer AT gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>  >
> >>  > Rolf:
> >>  >
> >>  > My faith in the admirable clarity and rigor of your analysis is
> >>  > profoundly shaken by this:
> >>  >
> >>  > > It is a fundamental linguistic truth that verbs used in narratives
> >>  > have past reference.
> >>  >
> >>  > On what basis do you make this assertion? It seems to me neither
> >>  > self-evident nor borne out by linguistic fact, teste folktale and
> joke
> >>  > on the one hand, and the practice of many eminent writers of fiction
> on
> >>  > the other.
> >>  >
> >>  > Stoney Breyer
> >>  > Writer / Touchwood Creative
> >>  >
> >>  > In Biblical Hebrew, where almost all the narratives are history, i.e.
> >>  past.
> >>  I don't think he means modern authors, nor folklore.
> >>
> >>  Karl W. Randolph.
> >>  _______________________________________________
> >>  b-hebrew mailing list
> >>  b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> >>  http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
> >>
> >_______________________________________________
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