Biblical Hebrew Forum

[B Chan <bh-chan AT hotmail.com>]

Dear Rolf,
 
Your dissertation sounds very interesting. Have you put it up online? Tak.
 
Betty Chan
 

> From: rolf.furuli AT sf-nett.no
> To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 09:41:24 +0200
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] tense and aspect
>
> Dear Isaac,
>
> In a clause there are words, each word having its own semantic range, gammatical forms with restricted or wider meanings, and the words have a certain order. All these elements have a meaning potential, and communication is to make visible a particular part of the meaning potential and make the rest invisible for the reader or listener. The author uses different means in order to communicate.
>
> One restricting factor is tense, and most languages have tenses (but not Burmese and Mandarin). The meaning potential of a verb is that the event can occur in the past, in the present, and in the future. When a tense is used, the time of the action relative to a vantage point (the deictic center) is made visible, and the rest of the meaning potential is kept invisible. You are correct when you say that a verb form coding for tense, has the particular tense it codes for, even when it stands alone. This means that tenses in normal contexts have uniform references; the form "walked" shows that the action is past, and "will walk" that it is future. The verbs of Classical Hebrew do not have a uniform time references, but YIQTOL, WAYYIQTOL, WEYIQTOL, QATAL, and WEQATAL can refer to past, present, and future. Thus, Hebrew does not have tenses, and the temporal position of an event in relations to the deictic center must be made visible by other means than the verb forms.
>
> The two examples below from Isaiah illustrate that Hebrew does not have tenses.
>
> Isaiah 11:8,9: "and the sucking child will play (WEQATAL) near the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will stretch out (QATAL) his hand over the viper's nest. They will not do (YIQTOL) any harm or cause ruin (YIQTOL) in all my holy mountain, because the earth will be filled (QATAL) with the knowledge of YHWH, just as the waters cover (participle) the sea.
>
> In these verses there are two YIQTOLs, two QATALs, and one WEQATAL with future reference
>
> Isaiah 9:6: "For a child will be born (QATAL) to us, and a son will be given (QATAL) to us, and the government will be (WAYYIQTOL) on his shoulders. and his name will be called (WAYYIQTOL) Wonderful Counselor...."
>
> In this verse there are two QATALs and two WAYYIQTOLs with future reference. (I see no reason to render the two QATALs with English perfect, as most Bible translations do—the "prophetic perfect" is an ad hoc argument without any foundation from the 19th century.
>
>
> There are also other sides of an event than temporal reference that an author wants to make visible. For example, s/he wants to make visible that an action is conative, ingressive, egressive, progressive, resultative, or gnomic. Or s/he wants to make visible the end of an action, or not to make visible any of the details of an action. The part of the event that is made visible is reference time (RT). The imperfective and perfective aspects are used in Hebrew in order to make particular details or no details visible for the reader or the listener. Whereas the tense of a verb alone places the action in the past, present, or future, the aspect will not alone signal particular details of an action. But the words of a clause, their meaning, combination and order together with the aspect, can make visible particular details of an action and keep other details invisible. In addition to the linguistic context, a knowledge of the world can also be necessary to ascertain the particular detail of the action that the author wants to make visible.
>
> For example, when some grammars state that YIQTOLs with past reference indicate "durative past," the reader is mislead.
> Durativity is a semantic and not a pragmatic property. A verb that is marked for durativity will never cease to be durative. The verb $IR (sing) will in any context signal continuing action. To use a particular time frame (here, the past) will not make a durative verb more durative. Moreover, the past time frame together with the imperfective aspect can also signal a semelfactive or instantaneous action, so we cannot at the outset know whether a YIQTOL with past reference signals an action that continues.
>
> The following example illustrates the use of the Hebrew imperfective aspect.
>
> 1 Kings 6:1 "In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt....he began to build (WAYYIQTOL) the temple of YHWH."
>
> What is the reason for the ingressive interpretation of the WAYYIQTOL? There are three factors, 1) the temporal adverbial, 2) the imperfective aspect of the WAYYIQTOL, and 3) a knowledge of the world. The last point is important. If the temple had been completed in one year, there would not have been an ingressive interpretation. But because we know that the building took several years, we ascertain that it is only the beginning of the action that is made visible. Thus, reference time (RT) in this example includes the beginning and a small part of the continuing action.
>
> In order to study more Hebrew examples, I recomment my dissertation, which analyses 2,106 passages from the Tanakh with 4,261 verbs. You will also find numerous examples in the archives in previous discussions of tense and aspect.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> Rolf Furuli
> Stavern
> Norway
>
>
>
>
>
> Søndag 12. Mai 2013 17:43 CEST skrev Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>:
>
> > I am still saying that examples from the Hebrew would help greatly in clarifying the difference between tense and aspect.
>
> >
> > As I understand it, a verb is said to possess tense if it can be time framed even if standing alone, as a single word, say שברתי $ABAR-
> > TIY = $ABAR-ATIY, 'I broke, or 'I have broken', as in Jer. 2:20. Am I right?
>
>
>
> >
> > Now, in the example above the "suffix" -TI is, in my opinion, the
> > personal pronoun אתי ATIY, an obsolete variant of אני ANIY.
> > Namely, this pronominal addendum is not a universal time marker per > se, but is merely conventionally and specifically (ad hocly) used
> > here as such. Hence, there need be no similar time reference in the > same (same!) pronominal suffix -TIY of the form W-$ABAR-TIY, as in > Lev. 26:19, which, indeed, clearly refers a future action. Am I right?
> >
> > Isaac Fried, Boston University
> >
> > On May 12, 2013, at 2:28 AM, Rolf wrote:
> >
> > > Tense signals the position of the event in the past, present, and > > future, and aspect makes visible a part of the event and keeps the
> > > rest invisible
> >
>
>
>
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