«Verbal Aspect» and «Tense» in the Hebrew Verbal System Thoughts by an Eighty-Year-Old Man

Abstract

Remembering a paper with the same title published in 1982, the author expounds what has been his own experience as a teacher of Biblical Hebrew and New Testament Greek, based, in the realm of syntax, on the hypothesis that in both langauges the verbal system functions in a large measure through aspectual oppositions. In the following pages the concept of «verbal aspect» is tentatively delimited and recourse is made to the Spanish language, where such a category seems to play an important role. At the end, an analysis is presented of the contributions provided to this topic by the second edition of the English translation/adaptation of P. Joüon’s Grammaire de l’hébreu biblique by Prof. T. Muraoka and its Spanish version by Dr. M. Pérez Fernández. The author hopes to complete this study in a forthcoming paper by further «reflections» on some recent contributions to this issue and to expound some thoughts as a fruit of his own experience as a teacher of Biblical Hebrew.