Some linguistic background - The Tenses
In Hebrew, there are only three tenses - past, present and future. In
English, however, there is a finer gridding of time - English makes
more distinctions than Hebrew as to the duration of an action
(progressive), and its time relation to another action or moment in
time (perfect). This finer gridding creates grammatical voids.
In the passage, the present progressive('are you doing') is used
when the action is taking place at this moment. English would use
the present simple for an habitual action. In Hebrew the same
tense is used in both cases, הווה. The present perfect ('have
had') is used when the action took place in the past - before now -
and is relevant to the present.
The past simple ('got') is used because we know exactly when the
action took place - there is a time marker ('early in the morning').
The series of actions in the past simple (folded, thought, walked, etc.)
all took place early in the morning. The past perfect ('had undressed')
is used when an action had been completed before another action
in the past ('folded'). The past progressive ('was walking'), is used
when the action in the past was in progress (backgrounding) at a certain
moment in the past ('when he became aware').The past perfect
progressive ('had been swimming') is used when the action started
before another action in the past ('became aware'), and continued up
to that moment and beyond it. Hebrew lacks the progressive aspect
and the perfect aspect but can compensate for the grammatical void
by the use of time words such as:
.'וכו ,וישכע ,הלא םימיב ,עגרכ ,רבכ,(ןכ) ירחא (ןכ) ינפל ,(םויה דעו) זאמ
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