Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/333

 THIRD PART

SYNTAX

CHAPTER I

THE PARTS OF SPEECH

I. Syntax of the Verb.

A. Use of the Tenses and Moods.

The perfect serves to express actions, events, or states, which the speaker wishes to represent from the point of view of completion, whether they belong to a determinate past time, or extend into the present, or while still future, are pictured as in their completed state.

The definition formerly given here (‘the perfect serves to express completed actions’) applies, strictly speaking, only to some of the varieties of the perfect discussed under b–p: hence the above modification based on the arguments of Knudtzon (for the title see note 2, and cf. further ).

More particularly the uses of the perfect may be distinguished as follows:—

1. To represent actions, events, or states, which, after a shorter