Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>]

to ruth mathys,

thanks for stepping in so eloquently. as an outsider, i was really at a loss
trying to give precise definitions. my use of TENSE is amply consistent with
the one you give.

---------------

to karl,

>>> When I come to tense, defined as “Tense is a grammatical category,
typically marked on the verb, that deictically refers to the time of the event
or state denoted by the verb in relation to some other temporal reference
point.” (
http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOflinguisticTerms/WhatIsTense.htm 
). 

BINGO! this definition of tense is exactly what i was referring to in 
my "definition 2" in my correspondence with rolf. 

some authors separate here what SIL describes as TENSE into two
sub-categories: TENSE proper and DEIXIS, the first related to what i call
"absolute time", the second, related to "relative time", i.e. "relative to
some reference point" (SIL).

some authors even include deixis as a fourth element in TAM.

>>> I by seat-of-the-pants familiarity with the text, Rolf by statistical
analysis, come to the same conclusion that this category is checked “no”.

let us form two hypotheses:

a. BH conforms with comrie's definition of TENSE (abs)

b. BH conforms with the SIL definition of TENSE (abs+rel).

both rolf and you provide a negative answer to hypothesis a.
i, too, agree and (i believe) so does ruth.

as to your claimed negative answer for hypothesis b, rolf's statistics is
irrelevant since it is not divided by DEIXIS at all (prior, coincident,
posterior). and you, karl, give really no argument against hypothesis b,
except for quoting repeatedly the same few lines of proverbs to which, it
seems, ruth has provided an adequate analysis within hypothesis b.

nir cohen