The Semantics-Pragmatics Interface of the Biblical Hebrew Verb Forms

This volume includes two general chapters; the first of these chapters suggests a new analysis of perfectivity in language, showing how the Biblical Hebrew verb forms encode perfectivity. The second deals with modality within the approach of possible-world-semantics, showing that Biblical Hebrew verb forms encode modality as well. The other six chapters concentrate on more specific issues that build on the general chapters: the way Biblical Hebrew anchors world and time, marks segmentation and discourse topic, represents speech and uses the volitives as opposed to the more general modals for performing speech acts.