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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Use and Misuse of Waw in Verb Tenses
  • Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 09:59:13 +0200

Dear

Clay Bartholomew,

I am skeptical of using linguistic models such as cognitive grammar, montague
grammar, generative grammar etc. in studies of of a dead language, since they
may disturb the material under study. But of course, different assumption
must be used in any study, and data collected inside different disiplines
must be used. But that need not disturb the dead language data, provided that
the assumptions themselves are not biased.

I have for many years work with the theoretical sides of Bible translation,
regarding which I have written two books. And I have also translted documents
from different Semitic languages into Norwegian. My definition of
communication is based on this and on data from Psykholinguistics. I would
like to mention two important points:

1) The letters or sounds of a word have no meaning, but they signal a concept
(sometimes two) in the minds of those having the same presupposition pool.
This concept has a core which may be easy to identify by the native speaker,
but it becomes more fuzzy the further away from the core one comes. These
concepts are the lexical meaning of words, and this tells us that lexical
meaning cannot be found in lexicons, it must be known! When an author writes
a message s/he uses words that are meant to give the audience a certain
message. However, the whole concept signalled by each word is not
communicated to the audience, but the author only makes a part of each
concept visible. The tool the author uses to make just a part of each concept
(signalled by a word) visible is the context. So the context does not
generate new lexical meaning -- all the lexical meaning is there in the form
of words (concepts), but the role of the context is to make visible a part of
each lexical meaning.

2. The same role as the context plays in connection with words and concepts, the aspects play in connection with events. An event may contain much information of different kinds, and all this information is not conveyed to the readers of a text. The role of the aspects simply is to make visible a the part of each event, and let everything else remain in the dark.
However, we should keep in mind that other part of Hebrew can be used to make parts of
events and states visible. In class yesterday we discussed Psalm 23, and we discussed
how *lexical meaning* alone in one case could make visible the situation that the
"sheep" lies in the grass, and in the other case this resultative situation
is caused by lexical meaning plus the Piel stem. A resultative situation can also be
caused by lexical meaning and the imperfective aspect.



Best regards

Rolf Furuli

University of Oslo


C. Stirling Bartholomew wrote:

On 9/16/04 9:18 AM, "Dr Dale M Wheeler" <dalemw AT multnomah.edu> wrote:


What you seem to be describing is his terminology of "internal" vs "external" viewpoint


That's not how I read it.

Rolf Wrote:


I give the following definition of *communication*: "To communicate
implies from a meaning potential to make a part visible for the audience
and to keep the rest invisible."


I took this to mean Explicature and Impliciture as defined in the cognitive
framework.
Perhaps I am misreading Rolf. It happens :-))


greetings,
Clay Bartholomew


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