John Cook: Time and the Biblical Hebrew Verb: The Expression of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Biblical Hebrew (2016)

[Jason Hare]

I recently purchased a Logos copy of John Cook's Time and the Biblical Hebrew Verb: The Expression of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Biblical Hebrew (Eisenbrauns, 2016), and I've only just begun reading it piecemeal. I want to sit down and read through the whole thing, and I'll probably accomplish that over the next month, since I have less on my plate at the moment.

Has anyone looked at his presentation and gleaned anything from it that I might be aware of as I start into the book?

What other relevant books might be available (either on Logos or through Amazon.com) that will add to the information that Cook is presenting or offer counterarguments to it?

Also, Robert Holmstedt's new book is coming out soon on Logos (and Amazon.com), if anyone is interested.

Logos Link
Amazon Link
Robert D. Holmstedt, Biblical Hebrew Syntax: A Linguistic Introduction. Learning Biblical Hebrew series. (Baker Academic, 2022)

I'm really looking forward to this book.

Cook and Holmstedt are an amazing team. If you aren't familiar with their recent work in Hebrew syntax (word order, especially) and tense-aspect-mood, you're in for a real treat!

[ralph]

i'm curious, I notice your "amazon" link, doesn't go to amazon.com initially, but goes to amzn.com and it then redirects to a link ending in "ref=cm_sw_su_dp" Is that a thing to make sure that anybody that buys it after clicking your link gets some money going to somebody? And is that to you? or to the makers of the forum's engine? i'm wondering if that's something that the forum did or something that you did?

It does look interesting, thanks for finding that

[Jason Hare]

i'm curious, I notice your "amazon" link, doesn't go to amazon.com initially, but goes to amzn.com and it then redirects to a link ending in "ref=cm_sw_su_dp" Is that a thing to make sure that anybody that buys it after clicking your link gets some money going to somebody? And is that to you? or to the makers of the forum's engine? i'm wondering if that's something that the forum did or something that you did?

It does look interesting, thanks for finding that

No. It's a short way of linking to Amazon products. You just pull the product code and put it after amzn.com. It's a shorter link, and it's part of Amazon's service. It doesn't route money to anyone.

[talmid56]

I haven't read their books, but have followed their blog "Ancient Hebrew Grammar" for some years now (https://ancienthebrewgrammar.wordpress.com/). They have posted on the blog several papers of theirs on these topics, which I've read and found very helpful. Doesn't look like they have posted any since 2019, but both have been busy teaching and writing books. I hope they'll blog more at some point, though.

Looking forward to your thoughts about the book, Jason. It's fascinating to see the insights linguistics brings to bear on Hebrew studies, particularly to BH studies. And I appreciate the fact that they have put out a BH primer that encourages and supports some communicative approaches to learning.

[Jason Hare]

Looking forward to your thoughts about the book, Jason.

It's heavy reading. I'm just starting chapter 3 out of 4. He's covered the history of the debate about tense versus aspect, synchronic versus diachronic approaches to the language, discourse analysis, etc. etc. He's about to start presenting his own perspective based on everything he's explained and his own research.

[Jason Hare]

From chapter 3:

All this said, it is not surprising that typology has long embraced a diachronic dimension of analysis (see Greenberg 1978), given its empirical methods and association with functionalism’s substantialist approach to language. Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994: 3–4) list four reasons for their taking a diachronic approach to typology of the TAM [tense-aspect-modality] categories, three of which I list here by way of endorsement. First, diachrony increases the explanatory power of the theory. This is affirmed by the more recent comment on causal explanations in typology by Moravcsik (2007: 39): “[T]here is no need to choose between synchronic and diachronic accounts: synchrony is what diachrony explains.” Second, given that language is constantly changing, it is unnecessarily limiting to examine “only a thin synchronic slice” (Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994: 4). Rather, and third, “[S]imilarities among languages are more easily seen from a diachronic perspective.” I would add to these arguments that the diversity of the data for the BHVS [Biblical Hebrew verbal system] (i.e., cross-generational as well as cross-lectal) argue in favor of attention to diachronics. Arguably, in the absence of native speaker linguistic tests, diachronics (and particularly diachronic typology) remains the only truly viable external “control” on the analysis of BH grammar.

Source: John A. Cook, Time and the Biblical Hebrew Verb: The Expression of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Biblical Hebrew, ed. Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé and Jacobus Naudé, vol. 7, Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 178.

In other words, "it is unnecessarily limiting to examine" only biblical Hebrew to the exclusion of any other period in the language's development. I thought that quote was fun.