poetry (or in the exalted, quasi-poetical oratorical style characteristic of some of the prophets, e.g., Hosea). The proposal of this paper is to divide and conquer, that is, to go about matters in a somewhat more pedestrian way by considering that each prose type is, in effect, a constellation or cluster of verb/clause types—so that a given verb form can be functionally and semantically defined quite well within such a cluster. The uses of a given tense within a given cluster may differ quite strikingly