Morphology and Markedness: On Verb Switching in Hebrew Poetry

Historically, grammarians have viewed tenses as simple, unanalysable pieces of grammatical information. Portmanteau may combine tense, aspect, and modality, but these are the main categories. Suzanne Fleischman has proposed a radically new paradigm in which not only verbal forms entire discourse contexts analysed clusters oppositional properties to markedness values apply. It is interaction cluster associated with form those its context that we find locus meaning. This interactive meaning illustrated by examples from Psalm 18, demonstrating morphological effect either drawing non-prototypical situations closer prototype or farther away prototype.