Is this the way to study grammar?

Classical Hebrew morphology and syntax, aspect, linguistics, discourse analysis, and related topics
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kwrandolph
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Is this the way to study grammar?

Post by kwrandolph »

On Friday, 27 Sept, Rolf Furuli stated the following:

“RF: Your words above point to the most serious weakness in the studies of Hebrew verbs. Certain definitions of aspect (among several possible definitions) are chosen BEFORE the study starts, and the conclusion of whether or not Hebrew is an aspectual language is based on these definitions. The answer could have been different if other definitions were chosen.”

Since “aspect” is already defined, shouldn’t we use that definition, then see if Hebrew fits it? Since there’s already a standard definition for “aspect”, shouldn’t that be the definition used?

“The only remedy to this is to use units that are "smaller" than aspects, …”

???? You mean not to use the standard definition?

“… in order to find whether there is a particular pattern in the use of verbs, which would indicate that Hebrew is an aspectual language; and in that case, what the definition of these aspects are.”

This sounds backwards. This sounds like à priori deciding that Biblical Hebrew is an aspectual language, then defining aspect to fit the use. Since there’s a standard definition of aspect, namely a reference to type of time (point, continuous, repeated, starting, ending, etc.), why not use that and compare Biblical Hebrew to that definition?

“ There are three such units, namely, event time, reference time, and deictic center.”

Are these not tense, not aspect? How is tense a subunit of aspect?

“ Aspects can be described by the relationship between event time and reference time.”

???? How so?

“ By applying these parameters (units) to different languages, we will find that aspects must be given different definitions in different languages,…”

Isn’t this an invitation for linguistic chaos?

“ and some languages, such as Norwegian, do not have aspects at all.”

On what basis do you claim that Norwegian doesn’t have aspect? Isn’t it on an à priori definition for ‘aspect’?

“ The advantage of this approach is that our definitions of Hebrew aspects are the RESULT of a careful study of a great number of Hebrew verbs, and not definitions that are randomly or haphazardly chosen BEFORE our study begins.”

I don’t see anything that is random or haphazard in the choice of a definition for “aspect”, rather what I find is a standard that is used throughout linguistics.

My understanding is that we have standard definitions for various actions noticed within linguistics. Therefore, to decide whether or not a language has that particular action, that we first look at the definition, then see if that language has standard ways to describe that action. To me, it appears that Rolf’s approach is backwards—that he à priori defined Biblical Hebrew as an aspectual language, then shopped for a definition for “aspect” and ended up with something that is very unstandard.

Would it not be better to coin a neologism than to redefine a term that has an already defined meaning? Does not the latter cause confusion, rather than communication?

Karl W. Randolph.
R.J. Furuli
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Re: Is this the way to study grammar?

Post by R.J. Furuli »

Dear Karl,

What is the standard definition of aspect? Who made this definition?

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
Stavern
Norway
kwrandolph
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Re: Is this the way to study grammar?

Post by kwrandolph »

Dear Rolf:

I don’t know who originally made the definition for ‘aspect’, but I found that the definition given on the SIL website, http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/Gloss ... Aspect.htm is the same definition given me by every other linguist, except for you. I agree that that gloss is too spare for easy understanding (the linguist who taught me aspect spent a few pages defining it), but it is understandable. In short, aspect deals with time, and Biblical Hebrew verbs don’t conjugate for time.

There are different kinds of aspect, and not every language that conjugates for aspect share the same kinds, but that doesn’t negate the fact that aspect deals with time.

It is upon that definition of aspect that I claim that Biblical Hebrew doesn’t conjugate for aspect.

Karl W. Randolph.
kwrandolph
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Re: Is this the way to study grammar?

Post by kwrandolph »

Dear Rolf:
R.J. Furuli wrote:Dear Karl,

What is the standard definition of aspect? Who made this definition?

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
Stavern
Norway
You have a PhD in Hebrew, I would expect that you should know these answers.

I agree with your analysis of tense, largely because I noticed the same patterns that you analyzed. But I also took the definition of ‘aspect’ that I had been taught and found that Biblical Hebrew doesn’t conjugate for aspect either.

I gave the definition that I was taught among the questions I asked in my response to you, didn’t you notice it?

Karl W. Randolph.
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Jason Hare
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Re: Is this the way to study grammar?

Post by Jason Hare »

So, "tense" would refer to the time and "aspect" to the type of action? Like "present" is (tense) now and "progressive" is ongoing or intentional (aspect)? Hebrew really isn't inflected for the difference between progressive and simple action. And if non-narrative biblical Hebrew doesn't mark for time, then it cannot be inflected for tense either. I have a really hard time with this idea. Narrative is so consistent (that is, that it is marked for actions happening in action strings, and interruptions within the narrative are marked with relative tense to the past) that it is frustrating that non-narrative (poetry, prophecy, etc.) is so inconsistent and topsy-turvy, with perfects and imperfects being used with no connection at all to tense. It makes you wonder what was really going on in their minds, if these forms were not tied to past and future. How could they have thought of action and time while penning these works? Is it just a feature of poetic utterance?

Most of my time in the Bible is restricted to narrative and legal dealings, so in my head the verb in Hebrew is quite stable and close to what we use in modern Hebrew. Narrative text can be understood by a speaker of modern Hebrew by just adding the concept of converted verb forms, by which the modern "future" becomes the "past" for narrative and the modern "past" becomes the "future." In other words, יְדַבֵּר means "he will speak" in the modern version of the language, and דִּיבֵּר means "he spoke" – these forms specifically being specifically tagged for the future and past, respectively. If you teach an Israeli teenager that appending vav will have vocalic consequences and shift the tenses, then they can easily understand that וַיְדַבֵּר means "he spoke" at the beginning of a sentence/phrase and וְדִבֵּר means "he will speak" – each marked for tense in narrative. Furthermore, if you explain that a narrative section has a flow of action that includes commentary about things that would happen (habituality) and that this is marked by the imperfect, which is the "future" form in modern Hebrew (even though it is used for potentiality in our speech, too), they will not have a difficult time understanding that Genesis 2 talks about a mist that would come up and water the surface of the ground. Similarly, that the perfect is sometimes used in the same situation to label things that had happened before the narrative string, so that Genesis states that God had planted the garden before he placed the man in it.

Narrative is so consistent and headache-free, so why is poetry such a pain?
Last edited by Jason Hare on Thu Oct 03, 2013 8:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Jason Hare
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Kirk Lowery
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Re: Is this the way to study grammar?

Post by Kirk Lowery »

I've often had the feeling that Hebrew does not grammaticalize time at all; that it is more a "discourse/text" level phenomenon in that language, what some people think of as "context". Or even that it is not a linguistic feature at all, but perhaps a semantico-logical one. Except that the wayyiqtol form does inflect for one kind of time.

Just saying'... ;)
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Jason Hare
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Re: Is this the way to study grammar?

Post by Jason Hare »

Kirk Lowery wrote:I've often had the feeling that Hebrew does not grammaticalize time at all; that it is more a "discourse/text" level phenomenon in that language, what some people think of as "context". Or even that it is not a linguistic feature at all, but perhaps a semantico-logical one. Except that the wayyiqtol form does inflect for one kind of time.

Just saying'... ;)
Sorry - I edited my post after you responded to add more thoughts.

So, you agree that wayyiqtol (וַיִּקְטֹל) forms are tense-marked? That's exactly what I get from narrative. Are there not wayyiqtol forms in poetry that do not bear tense?
Jason Hare
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Kirk Lowery
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Re: Is this the way to study grammar?

Post by Kirk Lowery »

In poetry, all grammatical bets are off in every language. By nature, poetry plays with the reader's normal expectation of how his or her language works.

I won't make sweeping generalizations about wayyiqtol in poetry. Anecdotally, when I see wayyiqtol in, e.g., the Psalms, I usually perceive short narratives (or epic poetry), even as small as a couple of clauses. But I haven't done my homework to make any assertions about use.
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George Athas
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Re: Is this the way to study grammar?

Post by George Athas »

Jason Hare wrote:So, "tense" would refer to the time and "aspect" to the type of action?
Type of action is Aktionsart, which is a little more ambiguous than aspect, as it can be taken to overlap with semantics (the meanings of words, rather than the grammatical expression of a word). Aspect is simply how the person communicating wants you to view an action. The traditional aspectual categories are perfective and imperfective, but there are other categories too, such as:

- simple or complex
- definite or indefinite
- near or distant

Like Kirk has said, tense isn't in-built into Hebrew grammar. It is, rather, inferred by the syntactical constructions and deictic markers. In prose, this is usually reasonably easy to do, but in poetry, things are much harder, as one of the things distinguishing poetry from prose is the use of non-standard and creative syntactical constructions.
GEORGE ATHAS
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Ken M. Penner
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Re: Is this the way to study grammar?

Post by Ken M. Penner »

Again, I fear that a questionable statement will be taken as truth because it has been repeated often.
"Tense isn't in-built into Hebrew grammar" is an interpretation of the evidence. I, for one, think it is an interpretation that doesn't carry a lot of explanatory power. It seems to me that the value of a theory lies in its ability to explain the evidence. It should have predictive power, i.e., using it one should be able to make claims such as "given this theory, one would expect such-and-such under these conditions" and have that expectation fulfilled.
Which theories of the Hebrew verbal system have the most explanatory power? Which can best predict the form of a verb in a given situation/context/instance?
Ken M. Penner, Ph.D.
St. Francis Xavier University
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