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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Emerging consensus (and paedogogy) on "Waw Consecutive" PSS

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  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>, "George Athas" <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Emerging consensus (and paedogogy) on "Waw Consecutive" PSS
  • Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:11:49 +0200

Karl:

This is especially true with Hebrew where there is historical record that
people used to believe that the different declensions had time related
meanings, just like in Indo-European languages. Among the “first year lies”
I was taught was that Biblical Hebrew declensions referred to time—tense
and/or aspect. Therefore, were I to read something by an author talking
about tense or aspect as pertains to Biblical Hebrew verbs, I would have
real difficulties accepting that he knew more than very basic knowledge of
Biblical Hebrew language, and that not accurate.

***

I suppose you mean "conjugation" !?
I would rather apply "declension" to nominal stems rather than verbal ones.

There are very clear signs that Indo-European languages originate in a language which had aspect and not tense as groundwork.
The aspect distinguished between on-going process and complete process without reference to past or present.
A typical consequence of that is that one can find the following kind of lexical pairs:
PIE *seikw "to flow" (as of liquids)
Latin, derived from this root, siccus "dry".
It's not a contradiction that "dry" is derived from "to flow".
to flow: on-going process
dry: completed process: no longer flowing; hence dried up.
Other "contradictory" pairs are for example, blank "currently burning and emitting light" and black "no longer burning and emitting light".
There are plenty of examples.

I'm not aware that Semitic or Hebrew displays that kind of phenomenon.
So I would definitely conclude that Semitic and Hebrew had or have a *tense* system.

It's possible that in addition to tense, Hebrew had a touch of aspect, as in French or English.
But it definitely looks like tense is the groundwork.

Arnaud Fournet







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