Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

>Thank you, Randall, for explaining that T-A-M is a tool that can be used to
describe an element of a language rather than a single present or
non-present unit in and of itself.  While I have subconsciously understood
this three-dimensional view of actions in language, I have never thought to
place that understanding on continuums (continua???).  Can you guide me to
the work that first introduced this tool?
Thanks,
Paul Zellmer>

I relabeled the thread TAM as more a propos.

I'm not sure that 'tool' is the right word. TAM is only an acrostic
that includes
tense, aspect, and mood. Simply referring to these parameters says nothing
about whether they are continua or discreta. In fact, the morphologies are
usuallly discrete. But the function and use may cross boundaries. E.g., in
English some like to refer to the "will [do]" structure as modal while most
refer to it as a tense that etymologically developed out of a modal. The
same is true for modern Greek with its "tha" structure based on thelein
'to be wanting'. [PS: my reference to color nodes was meant to illustrate
neutrality, not to suggest that the parameters are measurable continua.
that is the problem with analogies. One thing gets made clear, another
thing gets skewed.)

The exact way in which various languages can use or map their structures
to refer to a referential world tends to defy simplistic labels. Trying to 
talk
about such structures and to compare them across languages has probably
contributed to such shorthand terminology. Since discussions about
linguistic universals have grown in the generative era of linguistics, I would
imagine that a bibliographic check would be able to trace the growth of
TAM termnology during this period. I haven't done such, but I probably
reflect what I heard in Africa and in linguistics conferences and
publications since the 70s.

Hope this helps.

Randall Buth

--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
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