Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Psalm 22:16 - daqar as pierced ?

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Psalm 22:16 - daqar as pierced ?
  • Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2006 17:47:46 +0100

On 01/10/2006 09:48, K Randolph wrote:
Peter:

Languages just don't act like that, unless you are through the looking
glass talking with Humpty Dumpty.

It's you I'm talking with, but it feels like talking with Humpty Dumpty.

People who wish to communicate choose words according to their
commonly understood meanings, or as we say here, according to their
semantic domains. If he wants to communicate, he does not use words in
weird, unique senses. A word cannot have multiple meanings and still
communicate.

Nonsense. There are many words which have multiple meanings and still communicate. In English, to pick an example at random, "bear". Or if you want two meanings which are the same part of speech, "lie". If I say "he is lying", I can tell only from the context which meaning is intended, but only rarely (and then usually intentionally) is there any ambiguity.

There are many words in biblical Hebrew that work like that. Some may have become like that because the various senses of a word have become widely diverse. Others have become like that because, as with "lie", two originally different words have come to be spoken or spelled the same - as can be proved by comparison with other languages both ancient and modern.
...

Translating is a different matter. It is rare that the semantic domain
of a word in one language has the exact semantic domain of a
corresponding word in another language. For example, (WP in Biblical
Hebrew referred to all flying creatures, not limited to birds.
Sometimes a translator will use terms that seem unrelated to the terms
used in the original text in order to get the meaning across in a
fluid, readable manner while a literal translation may not make sense
in the target language. But I'm not talking about translation, but
about finding the meanings of terms in a language.

Thanks for reminding us of this important point.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page