Hebrew Tense-Aspect-Mood

Louis L Sorenson
Posts: 711
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 9:21 pm
Location: Burnsville, MN, USA
Contact:

Hebrew Tense-Aspect-Mood

Post by Louis L Sorenson »

This was posted on the B-Hebrew list. Some parts apply equally to Greek:
Dear Isaac,

There are numerous discussions of tense and aspect in the archives. But in order to answer your question and as information for new members of the list, I will give a few points.

Tense is defined as "grammaticalization of location in time," which implies that the time reference is an intrinsic part of the form (semantic meaning) and not a function of the context (pragmatic meaning). The English forms "bought" and "walked" represent simple past; this is their intrinsic meaning. In hypothetical conditional clauses and in special contexts, these forms can be used in a non-past way, but not in ordinary contexts.

Aspect means different things to different people; L. J. Brinton (The Development of English Aspectual Systems, 1988) lists more than ten different definitions of aspect. Most of these definitions are vague and tell us little.

In order to avoid much of the confusion of the different definitions, I use three fundamental parameters (which have been used by linguists since 1949) to define both tense and aspect; deictic center (C), reference time (RT) and event time (ET). The deictic center is the vantage point from which an event is viewed; event time is the time from the beginning to the end of and event, and reference time is the portion of event time (small or great) that is made visible by the utterance.

I define tense as the relationship between reference time and the deictic center and aspect as the relationship between event time and reference time. Tense signals the position of the event in the past, present, and future, and aspect makes visible a part of the event and keeps the rest invisible. In English, one clause can express both tense and aspect. Examples 1) and 2) can illustrate the nature of the English aspects. In 1) ET is the time of the walking event from its beginning to its end; RT is the sequence of in the middle of ET that is made visible, whereas the beginning and end of ET are invisible.
In 2) ET is the same as in 1). But only the end of ET is made visible. Semitic aspects are in several respects different from English aspects, because more parts of the ET than the middle part and the end can be made visible in Hebrew

1) John was walking from his office to his home.

2) John has walked from his office to his home.

After I analyzed the 80.000 verbs in the Tanakh, the DSS, the Inscriptions and Ben Sira in the light of C, ET, and RT,
my conclusion was that Classical Hebrew has no tenses (verb forms with an intrinsic past or future reference), because all verb forms can have past, present, and future reference. But Hebrew has aspects: YIQTOL, WAYYIQTOL, and WEYIQTOL represent the imperefective aspect, and QATAL and WEQATAL represent the perfective aspect.

In order to use a good methodology, I both made a synchronic and diachronic study of the Hebrew texts. My conclusion is that whereas there are small differences in the use of verbs in the younger books compared with the older ones, the nature and use of the aspects are the same. In different languages we can see a grammaticalization process, which means that a particular form with different uses or different references, gradually loose many uses or references, until it only has a few or only one use or reference—it is fully grammaticalized. Several writers have claimed that such a grammaticalization process has been the case with the WAYYIQTOL form, which at last, in some writers' view have become a past tense, and in other writers' view have become the perfective aspect. My conclusion is that such a grammticalization process cannot be seen from the oldest to the younger books. The use of WAYYIQTOL and the other forms is the same in the whole Tanakh.

Best regards,


Rolf Furuli
Stavern
Norway
Last edited by RandallButh on May 13th, 2013, 8:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: trying to label the thread generically for a wider discussion
Ken M. Penner
Posts: 881
Joined: May 12th, 2011, 7:50 am
Location: Antigonish, NS, Canada
Contact:

Re: The Terminology of Aspect & Aktionsart

Post by Ken M. Penner »

I should note that Rolf Furuli's understanding of aspect is idiosyncratic. On this forum, I would instead recommend Mike Aubrey and Stephen Carlson.
(My own doctoral thesis was on Hebrew Tense, Aspect, and Modality.)
Ken M. Penner
Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, St. Francis Xavier University
Co-Editor, Digital Biblical Studies
General Editor, Lexham English Septuagint
Co-Editor, Online Critical Pseudepigrapha pseudepigrapha.org
RandallButh
Posts: 1105
Joined: May 13th, 2011, 4:01 am

Re: The Terminology of Aspect & Aktionsart

Post by RandallButh »

I was sorry to see the b-Hebrew quote brought to the Greek list. To call the quotation an "idiosyncratic" viewpoint was kind.

In a nutshell, the following quotation illustrates the error: "But Hebrew has aspects: YIQTOL, WAYYIQTOL, and WEYIQTOL represent the imperefective aspect, and QATAL and WEQATAL represent the perfective aspect."

People who know Hebrew well and have a modest acquaintance with linguistic terminology immediately recognize the error (to equate YIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL and WEYIQTOL as equivalent, whether aspecually, temporally, or modally, is an error) and that error is so fundamental that it invalidated the quoted study. Unfortunately, people who don't know Hebrew and who cannot follow parallel discussions in cognate languages along with the LXX and targumim do not have the background for the discussion. Moreover, the discussion would revolve around a falsified premise (as far as things can be falsified in a historical discipline) which is interesting to most Hebraists like a dead-end alley to an explorer. (Hebrew itself has been in continual use from biblical through mishnaic times, where the LXX and targumim conclusively show that WAYYIQTOL and YIQTOL were semantically distinct verb categories [now recognized in comparative Semitics with Arabic lam yaktub and Akk yaqtul] and where implausible mental gymnastics do not change the situation, so that statements by medieval Hebraists [and the community that preserved and used the Hebrew Bible] confirming the distinction must also be judged as correct and as preserving the biblical distinction.) Since the Hebrew discussion is not within the Greek list giudelines it should be dropped here.
Stephen Carlson
Posts: 3351
Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
Location: Melbourne
Contact:

Re: Hebrew Aspect

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I split off the topic into its own thread. While I don't mind some comparative analysis between Greek and Hebrew, I think that a Hebrew-specific discussion probably belongs in another forum.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
RandallButh
Posts: 1105
Joined: May 13th, 2011, 4:01 am

Re: Hebrew Tense-Aspect-Mood

Post by RandallButh »

You might want to call it "Hebrew Tense-Aspect-Mood", since Hebrew morphology and syntax underdifferentiate aspect within the verb system. In other words, there were no aspectual categories like in Greek. One of the more insensitive areas for Hebrew storytellers was a differentiated marking of aspect. It took extra linguistic encoding and processing energy.
Ken M. Penner
Posts: 881
Joined: May 12th, 2011, 7:50 am
Location: Antigonish, NS, Canada
Contact:

Re: Hebrew Aspect

Post by Ken M. Penner »

The most recent publications on Hebrew Tense, Aspect, and Modality are those by John Cook and Alexander Andrason.
Andrason, Alexander. 2010a. “The Panchronic Yiqtol: Functionally Consistent and Cognitively Plausible.” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 10. doi:10.5508/jhs.2010.v10.a10. http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/in ... view/11272.
———. 2010b. “The‘ Guessing’ Qatal. The Biblical Hebrew Suffix Conjugation as a Manifestation of the Evidentiary Trajectory.” http://www.sabinet.co.za/abstracts/semi ... 2_a14.html.
———. 2011a. “Biblical Hebrew Wayyiqtol: A Dynamic Definition.” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 11. http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/in ... ew/11523/0.
———. 2011b. “The Biblical Hebrew Verbal System in Light of Grammaticalization: The Second Generation.” Hebrew Studies 52 (1): 19–51. doi:10.1353/hbr.2011.0010. https://www.box.com/s/b5scqwtqlukfn69dejaf.
———. 2012. “Making It Sound-The Performative Qatal and Its Explanation.” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures. http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_170.pdf.
Cook, John A. 2001. “The Hebrew Verb: A Grammaticalization Approach.” Zeitschrift Für Althebraistik 14 (2): 117–143.
———. 2002. “The Biblical Hebrew Verbal System: a Grammaticalization Approach”. University of Wisconsin-Madison. http://en.scientificcommons.org/7738203.
———. 2003. “YOSHINOBU ENDO. The Verbal System of Classical Hebrew in the Joseph Story: An Approach from Discourse Analysis.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 62 (1): 62–63.
———. 2004. “The Semantics of Verbal Pragmatics: Clarifying the Roles of Wayyiqtol and Weqatal in Biblical Hebrew Prose.” Journal of Semitic Studies 49 (2): 247–273.
———. 2008. “The Vav-prefixed Verb Forms in Elementary Hebrew Grammar.” The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 8 (3): 2–16. http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/Articles/article_80.pdf.
———. 2010. “What’s in a Category? « Ancient Hebrew Grammar.” http://ancienthebrewgrammar.wordpress.c ... /#more-268.
———. 2012. Time and the Biblical Hebrew Verb: The Expression of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Biblical Hebrew. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. https://www.eisenbrauns.com/ECOM/_3OS1FFZ3J.HTM.
Ken M. Penner
Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, St. Francis Xavier University
Co-Editor, Digital Biblical Studies
General Editor, Lexham English Septuagint
Co-Editor, Online Critical Pseudepigrapha pseudepigrapha.org
RandallButh
Posts: 1105
Joined: May 13th, 2011, 4:01 am

Re: Hebrew Tense-Aspect-Mood

Post by RandallButh »

To help recognize Hebrew insensitivity to aspect in storytelling, consider the following.

The Hebrew wayyiqtol tends to move a story along from one event to the next and provides a basic structure to a story in much the same way as the Greek aorist. However, in Greek stories the aorist is commonly intertwined with imperfect description. That is missing in Hebrew stories. To get a quick overview, do an electronic search of the LXX for "imperfect" verbs (where frequncies in narrative are well under 10/1000 words) and compare with Josephus where frequencies are over 20/1000 in narrative.

Then looking at the imperfects themselves will add to the distinction. Verses like Gen 7:18 shows three "mainline" vayyiqtol( 'waters became great, multifplied, ark went'). The LXX translator, with some sensitivity to aspect, used three imperfects. Greek likes to differentiate aorist and imperfect, so it ends up adding some imperfects to a Greek translation, but not enough to equal normal Greek sensitivities. This phenomenon is what I call failing to cross a threshhold by the translator, creating an unnatural Greek.

Hebrew stories create a kind of monotone "aoristic style" when viewed from Greek eyes. A careful reading of the Hebrew text will show that the vayyiqtol is indeed aoristic (i.e. perfective and past). However, in many places in the story Hebrew writer fails to mark any nuance that might be expected in another language where the events in the context obviously do not include the end points yet are encoded by vayyiqtol. In Gen 37:25 it would have been more sensitive to say that the caravan "was passing by". The Hebrew didn't bother, the LXX translator did.
Ken M. Penner
Posts: 881
Joined: May 12th, 2011, 7:50 am
Location: Antigonish, NS, Canada
Contact:

Re: Hebrew Tense-Aspect-Mood

Post by Ken M. Penner »

Particularly relevant is Cook's post "What's in a Category," at http://ancienthebrewgrammar.wordpress.c ... -category/ in which he mentions (critically) Andrason, Buth, Furuli (whose "idiosyncratic" views prompted this topic when Louis posted them here), and me, and where Mike Aubrey and I comment and Cook responds.

In this post Cook points to a valuable resource:
The World Atlas of Language Structures, at http://wals.info/ , which includes "Chapter 65: Perfective/Imperfective Aspect" at http://wals.info/chapter/65 and "Supplement: Tense and Aspect" at http://wals.info/supplement/7
Ken M. Penner
Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, St. Francis Xavier University
Co-Editor, Digital Biblical Studies
General Editor, Lexham English Septuagint
Co-Editor, Online Critical Pseudepigrapha pseudepigrapha.org
RandallButh
Posts: 1105
Joined: May 13th, 2011, 4:01 am

Re: Hebrew Tense-Aspect-Mood

Post by RandallButh »

Ps: Ken,
you might want to add Jan Joosten's recent volume, The Verbal System of Biblical Hebrew. A New Synthesis Elaborated on the Basis of Classical Prose (Jerusalem, Simor, 2012), and his articles leading up to it. More difficult for access is Buth, "A Short Syntax of the Hebrew Verb," in Living Biblical Hebrew: Selected Readings, 2008, because it is not widely distributed, though it is succinct and on target.
Ken M. Penner
Posts: 881
Joined: May 12th, 2011, 7:50 am
Location: Antigonish, NS, Canada
Contact:

Re: Hebrew Tense-Aspect-Mood

Post by Ken M. Penner »

RandallButh wrote:Ps: Ken,
you might want to add Jan Joosten's recent volume, The Verbal System of Biblical Hebrew. A New Synthesis Elaborated on the Basis of Classical Prose (Jerusalem, Simor, 2012), and his articles leading up to it. More difficult for access is Buth, "A Short Syntax of the Hebrew Verb," in Living Biblical Hebrew: Selected Readings, 2008, because it is not widely distributed, though it is succinct and on target.
Thanks for mentioning these, Randall. I find myself in agreement with Joosten. I haven't yet read your "Short Syntax," but I do recall John Hobbins' summary of it in our 2008 discussion, recorded at http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ ... hebrew.pdf (For those following, Cook, Joosten, Buth and I are among the contributors to the comment thread).
Ken M. Penner
Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, St. Francis Xavier University
Co-Editor, Digital Biblical Studies
General Editor, Lexham English Septuagint
Co-Editor, Online Critical Pseudepigrapha pseudepigrapha.org
Post Reply

Return to “Syntax and Grammar”