Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

George:

Looking at the dictionary in Mac OS X.6, I find:

“Grammar a grammatical category or form that expresses the way inwhich time
is denoted by the verb : the semantics of tense and aspect | fourverbal
aspects.“There are two aspects in English, the progressive or continuing
aspect (expressing duration, typically using the auxiliary verb bewith a
form in -ing, as in I was reading a book) and the perfect orperfective
(expressing completed action, typically using the auxiliary verb have with
a past participle, as in I have read the book)”

In other words, a grammaticalized completed/uncompleted action shown by the
different inflections.

This was also the meaning taught me when studying Russian.

AKTIONSART is more general and not necessarily grammaticalized, according to
the definitions I found, and it is not listed as an option in the SIL
glossary of linguistic terms.

The qal/yiqtol inflections are not grammaticalizations of aspect.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 11:59 PM, George Athas 
<George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>wrote:

> Just a quick correction:
>
> > This isn't true either. Completed/uncompleted actions is called "aspect"
> and
> > the Biblical Hebrew verb system has neither tense nor aspect.
>
> Not quite. The completed/uncompleted axis is not aspect, but AKTIONSART
> ('type of action'). The usual polarity proposed for ASPECT is
> perfective/imperfective. However, there are other ways of defining the axis:
> definite/indefinite or proximate/distant, to name a few.
>
>
> GEORGE ATHAS
> Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
> www.moore.edu.au