Re: Perfect mood

On Nov 28, 9:41 pm, "benli...@xxxxxxxxxx" <benli...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Nov 29, 2:08 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Nov 28, 2:34 am, "benli...@xxxxxxxxxx" <benli...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

One of the religious nutters whose usenet posts I read from time to
time made a comment about how you can't understand the Bible properly
unless you understand the Hebrew use of the "perfect mood". Now you
can get all kinds of amusing hits for "perfect mood" on Google,
usually involving scented candles, romantic music and soft lights. But
as a grammarian, it makes me grit my teeth. "Perfect" is a category of
tense or aspect, not mood.
Is "perfect mood" an established term for talking about Hebrew grammar
in English? If so, what is it really?

No.

No idea.

Hebrew verbal inflection has been analyzed in terms of "aspect" since
the late 19th century (but in a different sense from "aspect" as used
of Russian), but the system is rather more complicated than that of
Arabic and historically remains a puzzle.

If imperative counts as a mood, then all of Semitic has it, but Hebrew
doesn't have a subjunctive as in Arabic and Akkadian.

Thanks. There does seem to be a certain amount of use of this term on
the net, i.e. it's not just a misnomer made up by this particular
Usenutter. Many people use the term but indicate that it's "really"
more like aspect or tense. Part of the interest among these users
seems to be the fact that prophetic utterances, which they think of as
"future", are often expressed in the "perfect mood", which they think
of as like a past or perfect tense.

Hetzron in his World's Major Languages chapter acknowledges that it's
"among the most controversial and the most variable" systems of Hebrew
grammar. His view is that the earliest system was an opposition
between past (which I guess would be the "perfect mood") and non-past.
I'd still like to know who originally introduced the inappropriate
term "mood" into this discourse. I'm pretty sure all these current
users must have picked it up from some popular grammar, but I have no
clues as to which one. To me "perfect mood" sounds as wrong as
"singular gender".

I now actually own a copy of Dr. Joel Hoffman's parvum opus, inherited
from my late friend Michael Patrick O'Connor, who had filled it with
comments as skeptical as mine, so in principle I could discover
whether he's the culprit, but I had it with me when I went shopping,
put it in the bag with the box of moist dustcloths I'd bought, the
package leaked and got soapy liquid all over it, and it swelled up
into unusability. I did get the store to pay the cost of replacement,
but I wouldn't waste $45 (or part of it for the paperback) on a
replacement.

The standard treatment of the Hebrew verb remains that of S. R. Driver
(1892), which is adopted in all the reference grammars, and a
fascinating reanalysis can be found in Richard Steiner's chapter in
Hetzron's *Semitic Languages* (and more briefly in his article in Bill
Bright's *International Encyclopedia of Linguistics* (Oxford) -- I
don't know whether it was retained in Frawley's 2nd edition of it, but
probably.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Perfect mood
    ... unless you understand the Hebrew use of the "perfect mood". ... tense or aspect, not mood. ... Is "perfect mood" an established term for talking about Hebrew grammar ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Perfect mood
    ... hits for "perfect mood" on Google, ... for talking about Hebrew grammar in English? ... Okay, in many languages, there is the concept of tense -- that's the ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Perfect mood
    ... the "perfect mood". ... hits for "perfect mood" on Google, ... for talking about Hebrew grammar in English? ...
    (sci.lang)