Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Nir:

On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 9:53 PM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br> wrote:

dear rolf,

>>> I never "define time," but I define the concept "tense."

…

this is not comrie’s statement: it represents your interpretation of it.
first, i am not sure comrie opined that time has only three states. and even
if he did so, i say he was wrong. i quote:

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WIKIPEDIA: …

Don’t you know that wikipedia is not an authoritative source? That it’s someone’s personal opinion who just happened to edit that particular piece, which may or may not be accurate? 

WIKIPEDIA: Not all grammaticalise the three-way system of past–present–future.
For example, some two-tense languages such as English and Japanese express
past and non-past,

As a native speaker of English, this is wrong—English is a three-way system with past, present and future, with the past and future having subsets such as future perfect, past and past perfect, etc. That’s not counting syntactical structures that indicate aspect and mood that are so regular that they can count as grammaticalizations.

…

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end of quotation. let us look at BH. according to reichenbach, there are three
absolute states (past, present, future) and three relative states (prior,
coincident, posterior), of which BH grammaticalizes all (perhaps not the
anterior). and, in the gnomic situation, the atemporal. also, BH has a
different treatments of the repeated event (yiqtol/weqatal in past, present
and future. how do you treat repeated events in your statistics?) and states
(participle). at least these last two, and the gnomic, are temporally less
definite, and so include an important aspectual element (imperfective). BH
also uses qatal for remote past and yiqtol for remote future. so, BH
grammaticalizes roughly 10 temporal states.

I don’t see that, because I find Qatal used for past, present and future, including remote future. I find Yiqtol used for past, present and future. I find both used for perfective and imperfective aspects. I find some differences in modalities, but they both are used for indicative and possibility modalities.

What you describe may be true for modern Hebrew (a language I don’t know) and maybe as early as Mishnaic Hebrew (another language I don’t know), but when you take Tanakh as a whole, is not true for Biblical Hebrew. It seems true only by means of cherry-picking. 

>>> I have already mentioned that I have found 997 WAYYIQTOLs with non-past
reference and 956 QATALs with future reference. The only way to nullify my
conclusion that these examples show that Hebrew does not have tenses, is to
show that the mentioned WAYYIQTOLs and QATALs occur in strange contexts. But
that is not true; the examples occur both in poetic and prose texts.

i will be glad to examine any particular text. as explained, i cannot accept
the validity of this tripartite statistics.

And why not? 

…

>>> Here I have two important questions for you: Is there a language in the
world where the semantic meaning of verb tenses is different in poetic and
prose texts?

please read WIKIPEDIA: gnomic poetry. it mentions that the greek word “gnomic”
itself was coined after a certain greek poetic style. it also mentions several
traditions of old poetry.

“Gnomic” use of tenses is found in both prose and poetry, as a subset of present tense in English. 

…

>>> What is your evidence that the semantic meaning of Hebrew verbs are
different in poetic and prose texts?

the question is a bit odd: empirically, it is clear to us both that the use is
different. in psalms, for example, wayiqtol is rarely used except for a few
chapters which tell a story (the moralist chapters). but the chapters of
prayer contain basically only qatal-yiqtol, in versicles, with strong
preference to pairs qatal+yiqtol, with qatal not past and yiqtol not future,
rather atemporal. this is very uncharacteristic to prose.

Have you compared the use in Psalms with the prose of recorded conversations in Tanakh? 

…

>>> Your statement above leads to confusion. You refer to Carlota Smith. She
uses the terminology "viewpoint aspect" for perfectivity and imperfectivity,
and what she calls "neutral viewpoints." She uses "situation aspects" with
reference to the Vendlerian concepts states, activities, achievements,
accomplishments, and semelfactives.

does my statement lead to confusion just because  it does not adhere to your
terminology?

The question I raise, is there a common terminology, even a common understanding of the same terms, so that communication can occur? If not, then confusion reigns. 

……

best regards,
nir cohen

Karl W. Randolph.