Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>]

Thanx for that Rolf. It seems that the root of the major misunderstanding 
between Rolf 
and Peter is a lack of commonly defined terminology. I think you have clearly 
defined 
your use of the term 'semantic meaning with this post.

One thing I did not understand though is your view of the 998 wayiqtols that 
do not 
express past action. Are you saying these are exceptions to the norm? Are you 
saying 
they do or do not have an uncancellable semantic meaning?

What is your view on the sequentiality of wayyiqtols? Is sequentiality the 
uncancellable 
semantic meaning of wayyiqtols or is this a pragamtic feature which is best 
left to context?


-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of Rolf Furuli
Sent: Tue 8/16/2005 10:11 PM
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Basic observations on WAYYIQTOL
 
Dear list-members,

I see there still is a need for some clarifying words.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
To: "Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 4:46 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Basic observations on WAYYIQTOL


> On 16/08/2005 12:01, Read, James C wrote:
>
>> ...
>>
>> Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Rolf say that he had searched for
>> the parts which were
>> uncancellable, indicating that he accepts that there are both
>> cancellable and uncancellable
>> parts?
>>
>
> As I understood Rolf in the past, he held that semantic distinctions are
> uncancellable, by definition, and so if a distinction is found which is
> cancelled in some contexts and is therefore cancellable, it must be a
> pragmatic i.e. non-semantic distinction. But he now seems to have
> amended his definition of "semantic" to allow that semantic rules can be
> cancelled in certain contexts. So I am left thoroughly confused.
>

The terms "meaning" and "semantic" are used in many different ways in the
literature discussing Semitic languages, and the rule is that the terms are
used without any definition. In the general sense "semantic" need not mean
more than "meaning," which is a very ambiguous word. Therefore, I use the
term "semantic meaning" in the technical sense of a characteristic (an
intrinsic meaning) that never can be cancelled or changed.

Typical examples are verbs that are marked for telicity, such as  BR) (to
create). The end of the action is conceptually included in telic verbs, and
these words can never loose the  notion of a conceptually included end. This
was discussed earlier, and no one has so far
shown that the telicity of verbs marked for telicity can be cancelled.

Because the certainty of an interpretarion is opposite in proportion to the
number of factors that one has to account for at the same time (minimal
pairs in one end and discourse analysis in the other), it is much easier to
deal with lexical words than with morphosyntactic words and grammatical
forms. And in the case of these units we can speak of exceptions without
denying that semantic
meaning never change.

A key word here is grammaticalization. This is a process where a linguistic
unit gradually is used less and less in different ways and meanings until it
only has one use or meaning. At that point it is fully grammaticalized. A
good example of such a process is the verbal system of Mishnaic Hebrew
compared with that of classical Hebrew. When tense is defined  as
"grammaticalization of location in time," this means for example that past
tense is a grammaticalization of a past position in relation to the deictic
center. In my terminology, the semantic (and uncancellable) meaning of past
tense is that reference time occurs before the deictic center.

In connection with tense in English and Norwegian my words about exceptions
can be illustrated. To accept exceptions does not mean an acceptance of the
cancellability of tense, but it means that verbs with past and future tense
can be used in ways that can be called special cases. An example which is
rather amusing is the Norwegian lady who visited some friends in the UK.
They had a small daughter, and the Norwegian lady said, "Oh, she was so
cute". The mother raised her eyebrows and said, "Was? Isn`t she cute?" In
Norwegian we often in polite language use past tense where English speakers
would use present reference, We often say, "This was good coffee." when
English speakers would have said, "This is good coffee." Does this show that
past tense is not fully grammacalized in Norwegian? Not at all! All grown
Norwegian speakers know that "was" is past tense, but its use in polite
speech is a special case. There are also many other special cases, such as
hypothetical conditional clauses etc.

When I analyzed Hebrew and looked for past tense, I was open for "noise" in
the material, or exceptions. For example, I used different tests to find out
whether the 998 WAYYIQTOLs with non-past references were special cases, and
therefore could not be used as evidence against a past-tense interpretation
of WAYYIQTOL. The results of these tests were that these WAYYIQTOLs occur in
normal situations and contexts. This means that I accept that exceptions
(special cases) can occur. These exceptions in no way cancel the semantic
meaning of a linguistic unit, they only appear to do so. Thus, I both claim
that semantic meaning is unceancellable, and that exceptions of the nature I
have explained, can occur.

I do not expect that people will agree with my results. I appreciate that
persons use all kinds of arguments against my conclusions, because then I am
able to test them. But in order to have a meaningful discussion, there must
be some common linguistic ground between the participants. In a discussion
of questions related to the natural sciences, after I have presented
evidence, or even proofs in favor of a particular conclusion, I occasionally
have heard my opponent say, "I do not accept what you call "proofs," because
we in the future may discover something that will cause us to change our
view of the world. Because of this possibility I do not accept your data
now." In such a case there is no common ground, and I stop the discussion.
In linguistic discussions, common ground may also be lacking. When someone
denies that the Hebrew verb BR) is marked for telicity, i.e. denies that an
intrinsic concept of a goal or an end is a part of its lexical meaning, and
that this telic concept cannot be cancelled, then I view a discussion with
that person as a waste of time. There simply is no common ground.


Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo






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On 16/08/2005 19:49, Dave Washburn wrote:

> ...
>
>>I consider the rules of grammar to be
>>much more fluid and context-dependent than these grammarians would ever
>>admit. I am sure you can find whole discourses which are considered
>>entirely grammatical as a whole but whose individual sentences would be
>>considered ungrammatical out of context. How do your rules allow for that?
>>
>>
>
>Not sure I follow you here.  (Note the flagrantly ungrammatical construction,
>heh heh.)  Could you give me an example?  If it's from a language that I
>don't know, I'll trust your translation and description.
>
>
>
No need to go anywhere unfamiliar. Look at your sentence "Not sure I
follow you here". As you admit, that would not be considered a
grammatical sentence in isolation, but in the context of this
interchange it is entirely acceptable. For better examples, try
recording and transcribing a spontaneous conversation, especially a
slightly heated one, with a close family member. I am sure you will find
that most of the sentences are ungrammatical in some way, with whole
chunks elided, sentences left unfinished, etc etc. In such a case the
normal rules just don't apply. Of course you could try to define a new
set of rules which do apply for a particular genre, but I don't think
you would get very far like that because really language is used so
flexibly in such conversations.

>... It's much
>easier to twiddle with the meaning of a particular word or phrase than with a
>full-blown syntactic construction, at least if the goal is incorporating it
>into the general language of the locale or group in question.  Village Inn's
>redefinition of the word "breakfast" is a fine example.
>
>

Your wording and example make it sound like you think that semantic
change comes about by someone's deliberate policy of twiddling meanings.
It doesn't. Mass media campaigns can of course help, but most semantic
change comes about very gradually as new usages catch on. And new uses
of verb forms and syntactic constructions do take place, although more
slowly than changes of lexical meaning. An example would be the gradual
replacement of the French past simple with the perfect. Another would be
the change of the whole Hebrew verb system from aspect-based to
tense-based, which I think happened around the 1st century CE, but I'm
sure Ken can give more details.

> ...
>
>
>
>
>>... Clearly there are some languages
>>which use the same verb form for sequential and non-sequential, as they
>>don't mark for sequence at all. So you really don't have an argument
>>against the hypothesis that Hebrew WAYYIQTOL sometimes markes for
>>sequence but not always.
>>
>>
>
>You just made one of my points for me: some languages "dont mark for sequence
>at all."  My suggestion is that BH is one of these.
>
>
>
Well, my suggestion is that BH is a language which marks sequence in
some kind of weak sense, in that WAYYIQTOL verbs have a strong tendency
to be sequential but are not universally so, that this is a feature
which can be cancelled in the context.

...

>
>This sounds similar to Andersen's wayyiqtol that begins a new thought.  I 
>used
>this model in my Trinity Journal article about the Josiah stories lo, those
>many years ago, before I began developing my own approach.  It still has a
>lot of merit, IMNSHO.
>
>
>
Well, these are the kinds of ideas I had in mind. You are probably more
familiar with the literature than I am.

>>Also,
>>I would suggest that rather different rules apply in poetry, where there
>>may also be some confusion with WEYIQTOL.
>>
>>
>
>I agree wholeheartedly about poetry.  In every language I know, poetry does
>its own thing, which is why I make it a point to exclude poetry from the
>corpi that I examine.  (Note that I don't actually know whether the "proper"
>term is corpi, or corpuses, or corpuscles, or something else altogether.)
>
>
>
Corpora, surely? That is the Latin plural of corpus.

> ...
>
>>>...  That's why I
>>>hammer away so hard at the principle of Social Convention.  Without
>>>something like it, you have chaos.  I don't think that's what you're
>>>claiming we have in language, but it seems to me that you come close to
>>>it, at least in theory. ...
>>>
>>>
>>Far from it. I accept that there are conventions in language, although I
>>would call them linguistic conventions rather than social ones -
>>especially as the word "social" suggests that your next step might be to
>>formalise the convention and then stigmatise those who choose not to
>>follow that formalisation as anti-social.
>>
>>
>
>Once again, I don't see how you got that from what I wrote.  The whole idea 
>of
>stigmatization comes from you, not from me, and in fact it has never even
>entered into my thinking.  But as with so many other things, as long as we're
>talking about the same thing and we know it, call it what you wish.
>
>

Well, it's my old fear of prescriptive grammar coming up again. But it
has been evoked by the contrast you made between "bad grammar" and
"virtually all uses that said society considers "good grammar" ", which
is certainly a value judgment, also "a construction that is outside the
generally-accepted bounds of what the society in question considers
"correct." " And the implication of a statement like "Without something
like it, you have chaos." is that someone is likely to come in and try
to impose order. I would rather have chaos than language tyranny.

>
>
>>More importantly, I also deny
>>that they can be formalised. For one thing, they are very much dependent
>>on the specific speaker and the specific audience. Private conversations
>>between family members and close friends are often very far from
>>following the linguistic conventions which would be needed for a public
>>speech or lecture, or even for a conversation in a TV chat show which
>>must be understood by the audience. For the people conversing privately
>>can appeal to all kinds of shared understandings, and so can take all
>>kinds of shortcuts.
>>
>>
>
>There are idiolects, sure. ...
>

I didn't mean idiolects of this kind, although they are perhaps
examples, but the way in which so much intimate conversation is highly
abbreviated, often carried on with one word sentences and grunts like
"m-mm".


>... When it comes to the Hebrew Bible, we're not talking at the level of
>idiolects, we're talking at the level of a society's grammar; if we limit our
>examination to the so-called Deuteronomic History, we're talking primarly
>about the form of the language that was used in the various royal courts.
>That language involves certain conventions of a type that are necessary for
>communication to take place.  There is nothing wrong with looking at those
>conventions and finding descriptive ways to formalize them in order to
>understand them better.  I really don't understand why you have such a
>problem with this idea.
>
>

Well, nothing wrong with trying to formalise them, but in the case of
informal conversational language, with such a limited corpus I don't
think there will be much success.

> ...
>
>>Unfortunately we just don't have enough knowledge to work
>>out much of how this applies to Hebrew - although of course we can
>>assume that the authors intended to use conventions which would be
>>understood by their original audiences. We may see a bit of how it works
>>if we examine reported conversations and the editorial explanations
>>added to them for an audience which might not understand the original
>>context.
>>
>>
>
>Agreed.  We both acknowedge the existence of idiolects, but for purposes of
>understanding biblical Hebrew, it's irrelevant.
>
>

I'm not talking about idiolects in the sense of unusual lexical uses,
but about conversation which can be greatly abbreviated, in breach of
the normal rules of grammar, because shared assumptions can be made.

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



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