Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Nir:

On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br> wrote:

…

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.

And this is the definition of “tense” that I use to say that Biblical Hebrew doesn’t conjugate for tense. 

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).

If you had been listening to Rolf, he constantly refers to deixis. 

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.

 

Ruth gave a hypothetical answer that includes past as well as future elements. The passage in Proverbs lists only actions that the woman and those around her are presently, repeatedly doing. She provided no analysis as to why we shouldn’t take all the verbal conjugations as referring to present tense, imperfective aspect, indicative mood. In this passage, all conjugations have the same tense, hence the answer for tense is “no”; they all have the same aspect, hence the answer for aspect is “no”; they all but one have the same modality, hence the answer for mood is “sometimes”. This is just one of many passages, but this passage is particularly clear. The pattern used here can explain all Wayiqtols in narration without invoking tense.

This time as I am reading through Tanakh, I’m looking for present tense spoken sentences that were recorded—what I’ve noticed so far is that modality plays a greater role for conjugation than it does in narration, but still tense and aspect play no role.

nir cohen

Karl W. Randolph.