[B-Greek] APOLUTRWSIS

Barry nebarry at verizon.net
Mon Mar 19 21:17:55 EST 2007


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bert de Haan" <b_dehaan at sympatico.ca>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 9:22 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] APOLUTRWSIS



> A while back  Jan Hoogland <hoogland at hawaii.rr.com> offered an article for
> review and comments on B-Greek that deals with this topic quite a bit.
> I have not finished it yet but I remembered that he used the example "run"
> to demonstrate that words do have intrinsic meanings.  Here is a quote:

Whew.  This article is easy to shoot holes through.  I'm not going to get into 
it, but what he is really trying to do (unsuccesfully, IMO) is to find a common 
denominator in the thirty specific dictionary entries of "run."  Depends, I 
guess, on the dictionary -- no dictionary can exhaust the usages of such a word, 
and I am sure one can turn up a dictionary that lists even more entries 
(dictionary.com starts with 179 in its first entry).  The real explanation is 
not that this particular sequence of sounds has an innate meaning, any more than 
"curro" in Latin or TRECW in Greek need have the innate meaning of "run" 
attached (and note that they do not share the same semantic range as our word 
"run").  Rather, a word "starts" with whatever the speakers of a particular 
language agree should be attached to that particular sound sequence, and then 
the speakers speak.  Over a period of time, sometimes very quickly, that 
semantic range can get pushed, pulled, stretched, and tweaked.  Sometimes, as in 
examples already given, it can flip-flop entirely.  It should be no surprise 
that we can sometimes follow the logic of the development of the lexemic item's 
semantic evolution, but how does that prove innate meaning?  It doesn't, though 
it does prove that speakers of a language have the ability to hold a lot of 
semantic range in a lexeme if they have to do so.

BTW, Bert, how is your computer running these days?  Is the notion of motion 
(sorry) really necessary for that particular usage?  Other counter-examples 
could be advanced, but that's good for now.

"How come my nose runs and my feet smell?"

Barry

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