Biblical Hebrew Forum

["C. Stirling Bartholomew" <jacksonpollock AT earthlink.net>]

Here is a riddle in two parts:

mqnh-)brM    Abram¹s cattle
)xy )brM       Abram¹s brother*
)$t )brM       Abram¹s wife

Part one: 

Which two of these genitives should be grouped
under the same semantic label?

Part Two:

What is wrong with the following scheme?

Labeling  mqnh-)brM  "Abram¹s cattle" a genitive of property.

Labeling both of the following genitives of relation:
)xy )brM       Abram¹s brother
)$t )brM       Abram¹s wife

Postscript: 

What I am driving at here is the distinction between the code model of
communication and the cognitive model. There is nothing in the code of these
examples that would provide an answer to part one of this riddle. The answer
is found in the cognitive framework and it is culturally specific. In some
cultures both 
 
)$t )brM       Abram¹s wife
mqnh-)brM    Abram¹s cattle

could be labeled as genitives of property. So the answer depends not on
linguistic data (the code) but on the whole complex of assumptions and
inferences available to the target audience (cognative frame).

I think this point was missed in our previous discussion of genitive labels.
The traditional labeling scheme is misleading at a very fundamental level.
It causes us to look for answers in the code that cannot be found in the
code.  


greetings,
Clay Bartholomew 
 

*actually part of a construct chain bN-)xy )brM   "son of Abram¹s brother",
but for the sake of the riddle we should ignore this.