Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Paul,

I remember that you and I  had several interesting discussions in the 
90s, both on b-greek and on b-hebrew. I appreciate that you quoted my 
words, and I would like to elucidate the issue.

Mari Broman Olsen wrote a dissertation regarding the Greek and 
English verbs. The great advantage of her work is that she 
scrupulously distinguished between semantic meaning (uncencellable 
meaning which is an intrinsic part for the verb form) and 
conversational pragmatic implicature (cancellable meaning based on 
the context). In order to try to find the meaning of the Hebrew 
conjugations, one has to study their use. However, there are several 
pitfalls. For example, 13,539 (93.1%) WAYYIQTOLs in the Tanakh have 
past reference and 997 (6.9%) have non-past reference. Which 
conclusion can we draw from these numbers? Can we conclude that the 
WAYYIQTOL form has an intrinsic past tense? Absolutely not, because 
of the 6.9% with non-past reference that occur in normal contexts and 
clauses.

But how can we explain the great number with past reference? To 
approach this question in a scholarly way, on has to make a 
scrupulous distinction between semantics (intrinsic meaning) and 
pragmatics (meaning taken from the context). Except for may own 
doctoral dissertation, I am not aware of a single study of Hebrew 
verbs that systematically has distinguished between semantics and 
pragmatics!

The approach to WAYYIQTOL can be like this: Most of the 93.1% of 
WAYYIQTOLs with past reference occur in narrative contexts. 
Narratives in any language have strings of verbs with past reference 
connected with the conjunction "and." Thus, the narrative itself has 
per definition past reference. The verb forms used to express 
narrative may or may not have an intrinsic past tense. For example, 
in Phoenician the narrative verb form is the infinitive absolute, and 
no one has claimed that this form has an intrinsic past tense. 
Regarding WAYYIQTOL we must ask: Is the  WAY(Y) element the typical 
narrative conjunction that is prefixed to a YIQTOL form, so the past 
reference is a function of the narrative and not an intrinsic 
property of the verb? Or,  has the WAYYIQTOL an intrinsic past tense? 
The statistics above shows that WAYYIQTOL is not a past tense.

But if WAYYIQTOL is not a tense, what is it then? And what do YIQTOL, 
WEYIQTOL, QATAL, and WEQATAL represent? To answer these questions in 
a thorough way, one has to use the right parameters, and apply them 
to all the verbs of the Tanakh. There are only three parameters that 
are needed, 1) event time (ET), reference time (RT) and the deictic 
center (C). What are the nature of these properties?  ET is the time 
from the beginning of an event to its end. When we communicate, we 
make visible a part of ET or the whole ET; the area that is made 
visible is RT.  We can say that RT intersects ET, and in 1) RT 
intersects ET at the nucleus, after the beginning and before the end; 
in 2) RT intersects ET at the end.

1) Ann was walking in the garden.

2) Ann has arrived.

The deictic center (C) is the vantage point from which an event is 
viewed; mostly C is speech time, but it can also be future or past.

The concept tense (=grammaticalization of location tin time) is a 
function of RT and C. Past tense :RT comes before C,; future tense: 
RT comes after C: present "tense": RT coincides with C.  Tense 
represents deictic time, that is, tense is always seen in relation to 
a deictic center, a vantage point.

Aspect is the function of ET and RT, and it represents non-deictic 
time, because the time is not seen in relation to a vantage point.

Broman Olsen used these parameters, and she showed that in English 
there are two aspects with uniform meaning: the imperfective aspect= 
the present participle; the perfective aspect= perfect. (simple past 
is not an aspect but only a tense.)  Broman Olsen's work with English 
is excellent, but she erred when she assumed that aspects are similar 
in all aspectual languages.

The three parameters, ET, RT, and C can be used to analyze all 
languages to find whether they have tenses and aspects. But to find 
out whether the Hebrew conjugations are aspects and the similarities 
and differences between Hebrew and English aspects, we need to look 
at the inner constituency of ET and RT and their function. Aspects 
represent the author's viewpoint or focus, and it possible to see 
different qualities in this focus. The angle of focus (the area of ET 
that is intersected by RT) can also be analyzed. In English, there 
are only two angles (nucleus-end) but in Hebrew there are many. The 
breadth of the focus can also be analyzed. Because there are two 
aspects, and three different kinds of focus, Hebrew and English 
aspects can be compared in six different ways. The result is that 
three are similar, and three are different. Because the most 
important parameter, the angle of focus, is different, the aspects of 
English and Hebrew are completely different.

The task of the student, therefore, is to study different Hebrew 
texts, find the deictic center (C) of each verb, and see how and 
where reference time (RT) intersects event time (ET). I propose a 
challenge: Apply this to Proverbs 31:10-31, and explain why so many 
different verb forms are used in the same way with the same temporal 
reference.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli






> Poor Fred!
>
> Of course, he has gotten a "no" answer to tense several times and has chosen
> to ignore it.
>
> And he apparently does not understand what aspect is.
>
> Had he gone back to the archives, he might have found the following item
> from Rolf Furuli sent on Jan 9, 1999 (it was the first item that came up on
> my google search on "definition aspect hebrew).  An excerpt:
>
> "Let me also say a word about aspect. Again Mari [Olsen] gives the best
> description
> I have ever seen of the difference between tense ( a grammaticalization of
> location in time/ deictic time) and aspect (non-deictic time). Aspect
> highlights a part of the event time, either its nucleus or coda
> (end-point), but tells nothing about where the event is in relation to a
> deictic center (such as for instance speech time). Tense, on the other
> hand, shows where the event is in releation [sic] to a deictic center
> (before,
> coinciding or after)."
>
> In the post, he makes it clear that the Hebrew verb does not encode tense,
> which is the same answer as we have been giving every time Fred asks.  He
> also goes on to say that Mari Olsen's definition of aspect does not
> universally fit the Hebrew usage, but he states, "To understand the
> different nature of Hebrew aspect, however, we cannot do anything better
> than start with Mari's definition and try to apply it to Hebrew."  In short,
> he claims that the definition is very good, but not infallible, when applied
> to Hebrew.
>
> Yiqtols and qatals are used in different genres for different reasons.
> Their usage is not accidental or casual.  The question should not be, "Are
> the two forms redundant?"  Instead, the question is, "Why are there only
> two?"  Hebrew manages to communicate a lot of different concepts with a very
> limited toolbox.  For a fuller answer, it would take a book.  Oh, that's
> right.  The suggestion has been made that the questioner look in a book on
> discourse analysis of Hebrew.
>
> Paul Zellmer