Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kimmo Huovila <kimmo.huovila AT helsinki.fi>]

Rolf Furuli wrote:
> 
> Two grammarians who advocate the view about  semantic meaning are H.P.
> Grice and M. Broman Olsen. You can disagree, but you can hardly say that it
> is not a sound linguistic principle, and it can be falsified. You can just
> point to a situation wher RWC ("run"), or $YR ("sing") is non-durative
> (punctual). If you cannot do that, you should accept that durativity can be
> classified as "semantic meaning" because there are examples where it is
> uncancelable.

Is this a little bit circular? If a punctual verb is one that cannot be
predicated over time, and a durative verb is the converse (that may, but
does not have to, be predicated over time), it would not definitionally
make any sense to speak of a durative verb being punctual. Or do you
mean something different by punctual? Could you give a constructed
example of a sentence that would demonstrate a punctual use of 'run' or
'sing'?

Kimmo