Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

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

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • 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: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 14:55:35 -0800

On 16/11/2003 01:12, Karl Randolph wrote:

...

Like Peter Kirk, my native tongue is English, however I have lived in
non-English speaking environments forcing me to learn other languages. From
those experiences I learned how to learn foreign languages, not as a second
language, but as much as possible as a native speaker. I have tried to take
the lessons learned to apply them to learning Biblical Hebrew.

All of this applies to me as well, by the way.

The first lesson I learned is that lexemes have one core meaning (unless
where there are two lexemes with the same pronunciation that have merged,
like “to” and “two” in English). I found it easiest to learn to use the
lexemes correctly if I could learn that core definition to recognize how it
is used, even if it didn’t make sense in English. As far as I can tell, this
is what Rolf Furuli means with his psycho-linguistics in word definitions.

Another of the lessons I applied was to compare synonyms, sometimes
contrasting antonyms, to find out what lexemes mean. For example, there are
over a dozen synonyms for R)H [ra‘ah] “to look, see” in Tanakh. Some synonyms
have a broad meaning, such as “to put” in English, others much more
restricted, such as “to set up”.

One concept specific to Biblical Hebrew, look to see how lexemes are actually
used in Hebrew, not how we think (for theological or other reasons) they
should mean. Ah, theologians love to spin airy castles of theological
meaning, often based on definitions I couldn’t find when I looked at the
original text. (Maybe I’m not imaginative enough.)

I like your approach here.


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






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page