[B-Greek] APOLUTRWSIS
Barry
nebarry at verizon.net
Mon Mar 19 22:17:55 EDT 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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