A Tense Question: Does Hebrew Have a Future?
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Authors
Hornkohl, Aaron Douglas
Editors
Hornkohl, Aaron D
Khan, Geoffrey
Publication Date
2021-04ISBN
9781800641662
Publisher
Open Book Publishers and Cambridge Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Volume
7
Number
13
Pages
355-390
Type
Book chapter
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Hornkohl, A. D. (2021). A Tense Question: Does Hebrew Have a Future?. In Hornkohl, Aaron D. Open Book Publishers and Cambridge Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew. [Book chapter]. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0250.13
Abstract
Arguing that the Biblical Hebrew (BH) verbal system expresses semantics that correspond to all three Tense-Aspect-Mood (TAM) categories, the article examines the longstanding and deeply-rooted rejection in BH scholarship of tense, in general, and of future tense, more specifically. It next spotlights representative aspect- and mood-prominent treatments of the yiqṭol form, indicating where these more and less successfully explain the data, concluding in favour of a tense- or mood-prominent approach. Certain complications with mood-prominence are then considered, not least the categorisation of various sorts of modality commonly associated with yiqṭol. Finally, it is argued that a viable mood-prominent approach must comprehend the possibility of the expression of indicative future, which claim is substantiated on the basis of semantic minimal pairs of verbs indicating future certainty, on the one hand, and obligation, on the other.
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0250.13
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.81057
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