oa Tekstlinguïstiek en het Bijbels-Hebreeuwse werkwoord: een kritische uiteenzetting

*Bewerkte versie van een voordracht gehouden voor het Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap op 12 januari 1995 te Brussel.

A textlinguistic approach to the perennial problem of the Hebrew verb has recently been developed in various quarters. Scholars like A. Niccacci, M. Eskhult and R. Longacre have argued that the function of the verbal forms is not primarily to be described in terms of tense or aspect, but that the verbal forms need to be viewed as signals structuring the text in which they occur. Although this new approach is certainly helpful it also presents several problems. In the present article it is argued that textlinguistic functions are not inherent in the different verbal forms; rather, such functions are contextual realisations of the temporal-aspectual value of the forms.