Poor Fred!
Of course, he has gotten a "no" answer to tense several times and has chosen
to ignore it.
And he apparently does not understand what aspect is.
Had he gone back to the archives, he might have found the following item
from Rolf Furuli sent on Jan 9, 1999 (it was the first item that came up on
my google search on "definition aspect hebrew). An excerpt:
"Let me also say a word about aspect. Again Mari [Olsen] gives the best
description
I have ever seen of the difference between tense ( a grammaticalization of
location in time/ deictic time) and aspect (non-deictic time). Aspect
highlights a part of the event time, either its nucleus or coda
(end-point), but tells nothing about where the event is in relation to a
deictic center (such as for instance speech time). Tense, on the other
hand, shows where the event is in releation [sic] to a deictic center
(before,
coinciding or after)."
In the post, he makes it clear that the Hebrew verb does not encode tense,
which is the same answer as we have been giving every time Fred asks. He
also goes on to say that Mari Olsen's definition of aspect does not
universally fit the Hebrew usage, but he states, "To understand the
different nature of Hebrew aspect, however, we cannot do anything better
than start with Mari's definition and try to apply it to Hebrew." In short,
he claims that the definition is very good, but not infallible, when applied
to Hebrew.
Yiqtols and qatals are used in different genres for different reasons.
Their usage is not accidental or casual. The question should not be, "Are
the two forms redundant?" Instead, the question is, "Why are there only
two?" Hebrew manages to communicate a lot of different concepts with a very
limited toolbox. For a fuller answer, it would take a book. Oh, that's
right. The suggestion has been made that the questioner look in a book on
discourse analysis of Hebrew.
Paul Zellmer
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