Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Dear Chris:

You’re right, grammarians overcomplicate matters.

But Biblical Hebrew, being so different from our Euro-centered linguistic roots, doesn’t help matters.

There is no past, present nor future (tense) nor completed and incompleted (aspect) indicated by Biblical Hebrew conjugations. Mood is sometimes referenced, sometimes not, by the conjugations.

I’ve gone into it in greater detail in the past. I also have a study on it written out.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 7:14 PM, Chris Watts <dekruidnootjes AT eircom.net> wrote:

It is difficult to sometimes to fit another language inot our
catagorical boxes of what we are brought up with, when we try to do
this and it does not fit, then that leads to a mental block in
understanding meaning and nuances in the host langauge.  I agree that
we must translate hebrew into 'tense' or 'aspekt' since this is
'normal' and without that we are left bewildered by the hebrew
language.  However, I prefer now not to see tense, but rather
'perpective'.  Essentially which part of the sentence the writer
considers as having been set down as complete and 'immoveable' and
which part of the sentence is still 'ongoing'.  Some call this
completed action and incomplete action, and the verbs written
according to one of these two 'perspectives'

The funny things is, I agonised over tense and aspekt and the myriads
of pages grammarinas have written about this phenomena in hebrew for
months, for me, they over- complicated the issue.  The simple fact is
that just like in dutch, we baggage up the verbs at the end of
sentence and action is usually thrown towards the end of a sentence
like a motorway pile-up of infinitives, hebrew has its cultural
perspective, complete or incomplete.  The incomplete having to be
transferred into either future or present and the complete into
past.  As a sort of simple way to explain, and I wish grammar books
would explain in reality and not in high un-reacheable langusitic
concepts, let's say that I wanted to write the following:  The earth
will burn up and the people will tremble and fall, In hebrew this
would most likely be said as:  The earth burned up and the peolple
will tremble and fall. This is an over simplification and there are a
few more combinations but this, hopefully, introduces you to the
perspective from which, in those days, the hebraic mindset wrote and
spoke.  Modern hebrew of course has the three tenses now, but
biblical hebrew spoke with two distinct forms only and then varying
combinations of these two distinct forms would communicate the past
present and future in their evryday lives.

Chris Watts
Ireland