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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] lexicography?

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Karl Randolph <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • Cc: Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] lexicography?
  • Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 17:26:50 -0800

On 12/02/2004 15:36, Karl Randolph wrote:

...

Is this the way ancient Hebrews thought? Or are we imposing our modern way of
thinking on the ancient Hebrews?


We can't know exactly how the ancient Hebrews thought. But we can study how various present-day peoples think, including those who have had little exposure to western culture, and some whose general worldview is probably quite similar to that of the ancient Hebrews. Some people do study such things in depth, for example Ron Moe of SIL who is working on lexicography of Bantu languages (see some more about this at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/). It is reasonable to suppose (at least on the assumption that there has been no fundamental and worlwide change in human nature over the last 3000 years or so) that how the ancient Hebrews thought, on most semantic issues (leaving aside for the moment anything specifically religious), is in general terms within the range of ways which different contemporary peoples think.

...

With this in mind, what did the ancient Hebrew think of when he thought of,
for example, XBL? Did he “see” an object, long and snake-like, or did he
perceive a function of binding or grouping together where a “rope” is just an
excellent object to fulfill that function? Did the ancient Hebrew see the
form or function first?


Good question.

As I understand Renier de Blois, he defines XBL first by form, namely a rope.
He then looks at the varied uses of the lexeme in all its forms, to see if it
fits together. It doesn’t all fit together. As a result, he posits four
different etymological roots for XBL.

I, on the other hand, view XBL first as a function, namely binding together
or grouping together (where there is no object doing the binding). All the
uses of XBL that I have analyzed fit that one function. As a result, I see
only one etymological root.

My question comes down to: to what extent is it legitimate for us to use our
Weltanschauung, our way of thinking, when defining Hebrew lexemes and when
does it become an imposition of our categories, a distortion of the ancient
Hebrew understanding?


Certainly we should aim not to impose our own categories and ways of thinking. And Reinier is trying hard not to do that. He has come to a different conclusion from you on this word, but I don't think that is because he is imposing his own standards. In this case very likely we cannot be sure which is correct because the data has been lost (although we might get some guidance from Mishnaic Hebrew etc which sadly none of the three of us know).

...

To close, here is my methodology (to contrast with Renier de Blois’ listed above) (Renier, I list it only to bring others up to speed on what we have discussed):
1) A lexeme almost always has only one meaning. It may have no equivalent in
English (even for words from the same etymological root) or there may exist
an almost exact equivalency. The meaning may be very broad and general, or it
may be very narrow and specific, or in between.

2) Where a lexeme has more than one meaning, there is usually a discernible
connection, for example, Birne in German means both light bulb and pear, the
connection being that the early light bulbs had a pear like shape.


You are in danger here of the etymological fallacy because you are losing sight of language change. Suppose that 100 years in the future light bulbs are no longer even vaguely pear-shaped, and for some reason I cannot fathom the German word Birne is no longer used for the fruit, but only for light bulbs. Only specialists would understand the link between the word Birne and its original meaning as a fruit.

For a real example of this kind of thing, consider the word "cab" = "taxi" (is this only British usage?) This originally was a word for a small horse-drawn carriage, short for "cabriolet" I think, then used for "hansom cab" = horse-drawn taxi, and then applied to motor taxis. But if you ask an average cabbie (cab driver) where the word came from, they probably wouldn't have a clue that it was originally a horse-drawn carriage.

Similarly, if we consider how the ancient Hebrews might have thought, we can be sure that they didn't have a grasp of the principles of modern etymology, and so would not have made certain links which now seem obvious to us. And in fact we can tell some of the links which they did make from the explanations given for many names in the Hebrew Bible, a number of which don't make much sense by the principles of modern linguistics, but as folk etymologies they do tell us quite a lot about how the Hebrews thought about words.

3) Where a lexeme has a narrow and specific meaning, it often is either
partially or wholly a subset of another lexeme. Therefore, one way to learn a
lexeme is to compare it to its synonyms.


I would agree that comparison with synonyms is useful, especially when used in poetic parallelism. But I would be careful about this subset principle, which is by no means universal.

4) Lexeme meanings are best recognized by the action they refer to, not the
form. This is especially true of ancient Hebrew.


I wonder if this is really more true of Hebrew than of other languages. I see your 'OP example below, but I suspect that is more a matter of a pre-scientific viewpoint which did not classify things according to Aristotelean categories, which indeed do tend to be form-based not function-based. It might be interesting to compare the common names (not the scientific ones) given by English-speaking settlers to new animals and plants they discovered in America, Australia etc. How far are these based on resemblance in action rather than in form? Maybe the English of the ordinary settlers was not so different from that of the Hebrews.

5) Lexeme understanding and usage may be influenced by the context, such as
literary style, figures of speech, use as euphemism, or where the presence of
a specific lexeme may actually make it part of a complex lexeme (two or more
words combining to make another meaning, e.g. “strike out” having a different
meaning than “strike” alone, but the historical connection is still
discernible.)


The latter is a good point, and may also apply to cases of two words together, e.g. XESED WE'EMET may mean something more, or more specific, than the sum of the meanings of XESED and 'EMET.

6) This may be unique to Hebrew, where a noun of an object can be a reference
to an action. For example, David and his men were a XWMH a protective barrier
for Nabel’s sheep and shepherds, i.e. their actions protected.


Certtainly not unique to Hebrew, although important in Hebrew. In English we can't say David and his men were a wall, but we can say that they were a barrier, also a physical object. It isn't quite natural in that context, but we could say that Nabal was a barrier between David and the throne of Judah, because his actions hindered David in getting that throne.

7) This is, after all, a dictionary from one language to another, therefore,
as much as possible, I used as few words as possible, preferably one, to
describe a Hebrew lexeme as long as that was accurate. For example, XB), used
about 34 times, has almost the exact same meaning as “conceal” in English,
though sometimes in Hebrew it is with a niphal where English would have a
reflexive or active. (There is a slight but noticeable difference between XB)
and XBH, so I list them separately.)

(Though Biblical Hebrew was written over a span of 1000 years, most of it was
written during a time when the language was pretty stable. There was some
change which is discernible and an example of dialectal variation, but almost
none that I could recognize that would change the definitions of lexemes.)

In reference to category 4) above, ancient Hebrew seems to categorize
according to action or function, not according to form or appearance. For
example, (WP or (WP KNP is usually translated as “bird”, but that is not
accurate. It actually refers to flying creatures where the action is the
deciding factor, hence a bat or flying insect is (WP while an ostrich or
penguin is not. (This is also an example of 1) above—there is no equivalency
for this term in English.) Similarly, a XBL rope would be defined by its
ability to bind things together, not its shape.

So what do youall think?

Karl W. Randolph.


A few quick responses above.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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