The death of a virtuous woman? Proverbs 31.10-31, gnomic qatal, and the role of translation in the analysis of the Hebrew verbal system

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-300
Author(s):  
Kasper Siegismund
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Biblical Hebrew ◽  
Verbal System ◽  
Biblical Poetry ◽  
Relative Tense ◽  
Present Tense

This article draws attention to the phenomenon of translation-based interference in the analysis of Biblical Hebrew. It is argued that the so-called gnomic qatal only exists when we translate certain passages in a certain way. Based on Joüon’s approach to the verbs in Prov 31.10-31, it is demonstrated that it is possible to interpret the woman in the poem as deceased. Consequently, the predominant verbal forms in the passage ( qatal and wayyiqtol) are not gnomic, contrary to the almost universal rendering of the forms as present tense in modern translations. Rather, they have their usual anterior meaning. Other examples of translation-based interference in the analysis of Biblical Hebrew (including the question of the verbs in biblical poetry) are discussed, and a case is made for relative tense as the appropriate category for describing the semantic content of the basic opposition between the (non-volitive) finite verbal forms.

The so-called injunctive

1970 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-199
Author(s):  
J. C. Wright
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Verbal System ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Specific Meaning ◽  
Present Tense

The view expressed by J. Avery in 1885 that the Vedic ‘unaugmented verb-forms’, commonly styled ‘injunctives’, could be used in a present sense, as well as the preterite and modal senses confirmed by later usage, has had serious consequences. Firstly, the standard translations of the Rgveda and Avestan Gathas make use of this licence with a degree of arbitrariness and uncertainty which recalls the hit-or-miss tactics of Sanskrit and Pahlavi commentators with regard to verbal forms in general. Secondly, the description of the Vedic verbal system has become unmercifully complicated by the consequent imputation to the IE parent language and then to Vedic and Gathic themselves of a twofold verbal system embodying both tense–mood paradigms and paradigms which are at most faintly aspectual. A key role in the development of this theory, which postulates a grammatical structure and an impotence to convey specific meaning virtually without parallel, fell to L. Renou whose article ‘Les formes dites d'injonctif dans le Rgveda ‘(Étrennes de linguistique offertes far quelques amis à Émile Benveniste, Paris, 1928, 63–80, referred to below as R.), is still quoted with approval at the present day. I propose here to show that this article can no longer be considered to offer any confirmation of the view that the unaugmented verb-forms can fulfil the role of a present tense and must therefore be indifferent as regards tense.

THE ROLE OF METAPHOR IN HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE

Cultural code ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 30-37
Author(s):  
MARIYA PETROVNA LAPTEVA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Cognitive Significance ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Positive Sense

The article continues the author's series of publications on the terminological apparatus of the historian. The problems of humanitarian science cannot have "final solutions". F.R.Ankersmith paid attention to the fact that the attitude to the role of metaphors knows not onli "ups" but also "downs". Exploring aspects of the conceptual arsenal associated with the explicit use of the metaphor. "Implicit use" refers to those semantic situations when a historian or another humanist enters into a kind of dialogue with other sciences, carrying out terminological borrowing. Since the semantic content of the term changes in this case, then, in essence, a metaphorical action takes place that does not require a special name. The article contains, the author's reflection on the circumstances and features of the use of metaphors. The author finds out how and why historiography becomes metaphorical. Referring to specialists who developed the cognitive basis of the theory of metaphor, the author analyzes different traditions of understanding what metaphor is. There is a search for a positive sense of metaphor usage with some ambiguity. Since the metaphor creates a new meaning of the word, its cognitive significance becomes unquestionable. By citing examples of various uses of metaphors in the texts of historians, the author shows how a metaphor helps clarify the uniqueness of historical situations.

Aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael N. Forster
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Individual Variability ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Philosophy Of Literature ◽  
Aesthetic Values

Aesthetics, or the philosophy of literature and art, was one of Herder’s main focuses. By valorizing these areas of culture (in comparison with others such as science and religion) and in several other ways he prepared the ground for German Romanticism. He also established many principles of great intrinsic importance: rejecting apriorism and systematization in aesthetics in favor of an empirical, non-systematic approach; insisting that arts such as sculpture and painting express meanings and therefore require interpretation; recognizing the central role of genre not only in literature but also in such arts; perceiving the deep historical, cultural, and even individual variability of literature and art in respect of semantic content, genre, moral values, and aesthetic values, plus the major implications this variability has for both interpretation and evaluation; developing a set of radical views concerning beauty; and emphasizing the importance of literature and art as means of moral pedagogy.

Root lexical features and inflectional marking of tense in Proto-Indo-European

2009 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNAMARIA BARTOLOTTA
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Verbal System ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
Lexical Feature ◽  
General Linguistic ◽  
Linguistic Approaches ◽  
Shed Light

This paper examines early inflectional morphology related to the tense-aspect system of Proto-Indo-European. It will be argued that historical linguistics can shed light on the long-standing debate over the emergence of tense-aspect morphology in language acquisition. The dispute over this issue is well-known; it has been pursued mostly by scholars following various general linguistic approaches, from typology to acquisition, but also by historical linguists and Indo-Europeanists, who have long debated about the precedence of aspect or tense from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. However, so far Indo-Europeanists have rarely confronted their results in a successful way with recent research in other fields such as acquisition or neurolinguistics. The aim of this paper is to put forward evidence from the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European verbal system concerning the prominent role of root lexical aspect features in the emergence of grammatical marking of tense in the proto-language. More precisely, by means of a comparison between the residual archaic verbal forms of theinjunctivein Vedic Sanskrit and the corresponding augmentless preterites in Homeric Greek, it will be argued that the [±telic] lexical feature of the inherited verbal root is responsible for a non-random distribution of past tense inflected forms in an earlier verbal paradigm.

Between the physical and the virtual: The present tense of virtual space

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-109
Author(s):  
Andrew Burrell
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Installation Art ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
The Other ◽  
Interactive Installation ◽  
Immersive Virtual Environments ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Alternate Reality ◽  
Narrative Spaces

This article explores a way of thinking about virtual environments and how they might be used to create new spaces, not as an alternate reality, but as an integrated part of reality – regardless of this reality being physical and/or digital. Virtual environments can be seen as an extension of reality – the physical and the virtual sitting side by side with one, more often than not, bleeding into the other. The virtual is not separable from the physical and vice versa. This position will be formed by directly referring to traditions that stem from processes and ideas around materiality, poetics and philosophy rather than centring on technical or hardware specifics. At the centre of this exploration is an ongoing investigation into the role of memory and imagination in narrative spaces in immersive virtual environments, stemming from the author’s background in interactive Installation art and designing for virtual environments. The article’s subtitle refers to Robert Morris’s 1978 article, ‘The present tense of space’, which informs the article’s overall position.

scholarly journals Morphological Spelling

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-45
Author(s):  
Hanna Rutkowska
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
William Caxton ◽  
English Spelling ◽  
Printing House

This study aims at contributing to the discussion on the role of the early printers in the regularisation and standardisation of the English spelling. It assesses the degree of early printers’ (in)consistency concerning morphological spelling, in particular the spelling of third person singular present tense (indicative) inflectional endings of verbs in six editions of The book of good maners (1487–1526), printed by William Caxton, Richard Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde. The analysis suggests that early printers could have been interested in regularising spelling already before normative guidance from scholars became available in the form of grammars and spelling books, that is before the middle of the sixteenth century. However, the levels of the printers’ spelling consistency varied, depending on the particular printing house and edition.

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