My (limited) understanding of Hebrew grammar more or less matches this. Modern Hebrew has past, present, and future tenses, but the rest of the variation comes from the seven binyanim (what you called aspects), which are things like causitive, reflexive, intensified, and some others I can't remember right now.
Biblical Hebrew does this weird thing that sometimes (often?) uses what appears to be future tense to mean past tense. I don't know if Biblical Hebrew just doesn't do past tense, or what. If you see a vav at the beginning of an apparently-future-tense verb, it flips it to past. (For example, "yomeir" would be "he will speak", but "vayomeir" is "he spoke".) This doesn't happen in modern Hebrew, according to my Israeli husband.
Actually, one particular central disagreement between Judaism and Christianity hinges on whether a certain passage in Isaiah uses vav-conversive or not... and you need more context than we have (in that case) to be certain whether it is or not.
Biblical Hebrew does have a past tense. The vav-conversive, as best we can tell (it's unclear), often indicates sequential actions: if independent actions took place in the past (or will/might take place in the future), they're all indicated with past or future tense as appropriate, but when a sequence of related actions is set in the past or the future the first action takes the appropriate tense and the rest of the actions in the sequence take the opposite tense with vav-conversive. It's rather confusing, especially when it's then quoted elsewhere starting in the middle of the vav-conversive so it looks like the entire sequence is in the wrong tense....
Just as bad is that, since there's only "past" (== "perfect") and "future" (== "imperfect") tenses plus a few special forms constructed from the future tense (infinitive, imperative, participle/gerund), the imperfect tense can be used to indicate imperfect, future, conditional, occasionally the subjunctive mood, and even sometimes the present tense (which is normally done by using the participle/gerund form as if it were a verb instead of a noun). And as above, you need (occasionally missing) context to figure out which is which; most of the conditional uses contain marker words such as "im" ("if") or "pen" ("lest"), but not all.
All in all, there's good reason why experts are still debating the actual meaning of Hebrew Scripture.
BTW, the binyanim consist of four aspects (active, passive, causative, reflexive) in two intensities (normal and intensified), producing seven binyanim; the reflexive form doesn't have an intensified version, but is in some ways "intensified" all by itself. (I've noticed that, at least in Biblical Hebrew, its use tends to signal the involvement of free will — coerced or forced action tends to be presented as the causative form applied to the coercer instead. How many languages do you know that have a "free will" verb aspect?)
Then there's that weird thing with modern Hebrew at least (I haven't yet looked at enough ancient Hebrew to know) where verb tense differences between the dominant and subordinate clauses in a sentence change the meaning subtly. If the past tense is used in a subordinate clause where the past tense also appears in the dominant clause, it indicates that the subordinate-clause action is happening *further* in the past than the action in the dominant clause. :)
Apparently nobody much uses the complex binyanim in Modern Hebrew, as is the case, I'm told, with things like the masculine numbers and that sort of thing...
Japanese does all of its complex tenses by compounding verbs together, so they're sort of concatenated, as I recall, and/or by adding idiomatic expressions ("might be," "appears to be" etc.) into the verb.
If the past tense is used in a subordinate clause where the past tense also appears in the dominant clause, it indicates that the subordinate-clause action is happening *further* in the past than the action in the dominant clause. :)
Whoa... that does seem like a useful construct to have at times, but I'll bet it causes a lot of confusion for people learning the language. It would sure hose me. :-)
Apparently nobody much uses the complex binyanim in Modern Hebrew, as is the case, I'm told, with things like the masculine numbers and that sort of thing...
I'm curious about your source. I went to bilingual (English/Hebrew, including native-language teachers and some classmates) schools from pre-school though High School and was at various ages able to fool people into thinking I was a native Israeli, and none of this matches my experience.
"the complex binyanim"? Which are those? There are are roots which have standard meanings in only some of the 7 binyanim, or mean different things in different binyanim, so if you don't use certain binyanim you will lose parts of your basic vocabulary as well. To illustrate with two very common, very basic verbs: ktb 'write' is usually used in the qal binyan while dbr 'speak' is usually used in the pi'el binyan. If someone were to stop using either of these binyanim, they would lose some very common, very basic vocabulary. Some binyanim are used more than others, but all have some basic everyday words.
As for not using masculine numbers, they don't get used much for counting (as in counting on fingers) but if you use a feminine number with a masculine noun it really does sound wrong/non-native.
Japanese does all of its complex tenses by compounding verbs together There's a good-sized appendix in the back of my Japanese intermediate grammar book full of auxiliary verbs that you can append to another verb to modify its action, and you can more or less tack on as many as you want. (The number of combinations of the four giving verbs alone is kind of daunting.) There's also a whole big group of nouns and pseudonouns that get attached to the ends of verbs in order to show markings that you might have been missing just from the aux-verbs.
That said, I've been sitting here trying to think how to express future perfect in Japanese using only verbs and not coming up with a way I'm sure will work--most things I think of just use simple imperfective with adjectival time-markers. :)
BTW, the binyanim consist of four aspects (active, passive, causative, reflexive) in two intensities (normal and intensified), producing seven binyanim; the reflexive form doesn't have an intensified version, but is in some ways "intensified" all by itself.
Interesting classification. I've always seen the 7 binyanim described as active and passive crossed with standard, intensive, and causative, plus the reflexive which doesn't get a pair-mate because the active and passive have the same subject by definition.
What would you consider to be an example of intensified causative?
(no subject)
Biblical Hebrew does this weird thing that sometimes (often?) uses what appears to be future tense to mean past tense. I don't know if Biblical Hebrew just doesn't do past tense, or what. If you see a vav at the beginning of an apparently-future-tense verb, it flips it to past. (For example, "yomeir" would be "he will speak", but "vayomeir" is "he spoke".) This doesn't happen in modern Hebrew, according to my Israeli husband.
(no subject)
Woah, that's gotta make prophecies especially interesting.
(no subject)
Biblical Hebrew does have a past tense. The vav-conversive, as best we can tell (it's unclear), often indicates sequential actions: if independent actions took place in the past (or will/might take place in the future), they're all indicated with past or future tense as appropriate, but when a sequence of related actions is set in the past or the future the first action takes the appropriate tense and the rest of the actions in the sequence take the opposite tense with vav-conversive. It's rather confusing, especially when it's then quoted elsewhere starting in the middle of the vav-conversive so it looks like the entire sequence is in the wrong tense....
Just as bad is that, since there's only "past" (== "perfect") and "future" (== "imperfect") tenses plus a few special forms constructed from the future tense (infinitive, imperative, participle/gerund), the imperfect tense can be used to indicate imperfect, future, conditional, occasionally the subjunctive mood, and even sometimes the present tense (which is normally done by using the participle/gerund form as if it were a verb instead of a noun). And as above, you need (occasionally missing) context to figure out which is which; most of the conditional uses contain marker words such as "im" ("if") or "pen" ("lest"), but not all.
All in all, there's good reason why experts are still debating the actual meaning of Hebrew Scripture.
BTW, the binyanim consist of four aspects (active, passive, causative, reflexive) in two intensities (normal and intensified), producing seven binyanim; the reflexive form doesn't have an intensified version, but is in some ways "intensified" all by itself. (I've noticed that, at least in Biblical Hebrew, its use tends to signal the involvement of free will — coerced or forced action tends to be presented as the causative form applied to the coercer instead. How many languages do you know that have a "free will" verb aspect?)
My pitiful Hebrew-related contribution
Apparently nobody much uses the complex binyanim in Modern Hebrew, as is the case, I'm told, with things like the masculine numbers and that sort of thing...
Japanese does all of its complex tenses by compounding verbs together, so they're sort of concatenated, as I recall, and/or by adding idiomatic expressions ("might be," "appears to be" etc.) into the verb.
Re: My pitiful Hebrew-related contribution
Whoa... that does seem like a useful construct to have at times, but I'll bet it causes a lot of confusion for people learning the language. It would sure hose me. :-)
Re: My pitiful Hebrew-related contribution
I'm curious about your source. I went to bilingual (English/Hebrew, including native-language teachers and some classmates) schools from pre-school though High School and was at various ages able to fool people into thinking I was a native Israeli, and none of this matches my experience.
"the complex binyanim"? Which are those? There are are roots which have standard meanings in only some of the 7 binyanim, or mean different things in different binyanim, so if you don't use certain binyanim you will lose parts of your basic vocabulary as well. To illustrate with two very common, very basic verbs: ktb 'write' is usually used in the qal binyan while dbr 'speak' is usually used in the pi'el binyan. If someone were to stop using either of these binyanim, they would lose some very common, very basic vocabulary. Some binyanim are used more than others, but all have some basic everyday words.
As for not using masculine numbers, they don't get used much for counting (as in counting on fingers) but if you use a feminine number with a masculine noun it really does sound wrong/non-native.
Re: My pitiful Japanese-related contribution
There's a good-sized appendix in the back of my Japanese intermediate grammar book full of auxiliary verbs that you can append to another verb to modify its action, and you can more or less tack on as many as you want. (The number of combinations of the four giving verbs alone is kind of daunting.) There's also a whole big group of nouns and pseudonouns that get attached to the ends of verbs in order to show markings that you might have been missing just from the aux-verbs.
That said, I've been sitting here trying to think how to express future perfect in Japanese using only verbs and not coming up with a way I'm sure will work--most things I think of just use simple imperfective with adjectival time-markers. :)
Re: My pitiful Japanese-related contribution
Erk. I meant "adverbial".
(no subject)
Interesting classification. I've always seen the 7 binyanim described as active and passive crossed with standard, intensive, and causative, plus the reflexive which doesn't get a pair-mate because the active and passive have the same subject by definition.
What would you consider to be an example of intensified causative?