Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear David,

I do not want to continue this discussion, but for the record I will say a
few things. Your comments below makes me wonder if you really have read my
dissertation, or if you just have rushed through it in a short time.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Kummerow" <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 12:25 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] how scholars debate controversial issues


snip
> >
>
> I think Rolf objects because to him "uncancellable semantics" is
> tautologous -- for him, semantics is 100% uncancellable, so there is no
> need to additionally supply "uncancellable". For him "semantics" =
> "uncancellable intrinsic meaning".



This is wrong! I define "semantics" as does D. Chrystal in "A Dictionary of
Linguistics and Phonetics": "Semantics...is the study of meaning in
language". The word "meaning" (=semantics) can refer to many things;
therefore I use the qualification "semantic meaning" to refer to
uncancallable meaning. Neither "semantic" nor "meaning" refer to something 
uncancellable, but together I use the words as atechnical term for 
"uncancellable meaning", i.e, meaning that cannot be changed by the context.

My objection to this is just this
> assumption -- the assumption that semantics is uncancellable, so for me
> since I don't hold to his view using "uncancellable semantics" in
> reference to his view is fine. The principle of uncancellable intrinsic
> meaning is basically assumed in his work. In his post in reply to this
> one of yours, he provides some English examples which he takes as proof
> of his position; however, Peter particularly and intermittently have
> replied to him in the past that such a presentation of our language is a
> misrepresentation to which Rolf chooses to not respond. No progress will
> be made, I think, because Rolf seems unwilling to discuss these basic
> issues of methodology which have profound effects upon his critique of
> past scholarship and his own conclusions regarding the BH verbal system.

You should not interpret a lack of comments as unwillingness to make
comments. I found your original examples irrelvant to my study, so I just
made some general comments. Later I commented on NUN paragogicum when
someone asked me to do so,andshowed that this was irrelevant as well.
In the past, discussions with one list-member used
to reach a point where everything just became silly. It should not be
interpreted as unwillingness when I want to avoid such discussions.

> > Karl seems to hold to some similar, though not identical, notion
> > to what an amateur like me would understand by uncancellable intrinsic
> > meaning. But Karl has said he doesn't know what to make of Rolf's
> > theory either.
>
> Karl's approach to lexicography may perhaps be seen as analogous to
> Rolf's work on the verbal system. Their approach assumes that there is
> something uncancellable between every occurrence of a lexical item in
> Karl's case and every occurrence of a verb form in Rolf's.

You are wrong again! I cannot understand how you can write the above words
if you really have read my dissertation. I definitely do not believe "there
is something uncancellable...in...every occurence of a verb form". The very 
opposite is true!
On p. 35 under the heading "The search for semantic meaning" it is said: "In 
this
study, therefore, we are not concerned with the thousands of verb forms
whose function is caused by the interplay of many linguistic factors, but
rather with the few hundred examples where we, with a reasonable certainty,
can know that a particular characteristic is caused by a particular verb
form alone /I add here: this is uncancellable meaning, as the context 
show/."
And you can hardly have read chapter 8, where a principal point is that
both aspects (YIQTOL, WAYYIQTOL, QATAL, and  WEQATAL) can be used in the 
same situations without any visible
difference in meaning. This is exactly the opposite of what you say my view
is!

Bryant has several good points in his recent post: the essence is  there
is a need to explicate.

I supply two examples from C. Smith  "A Parameter of Aspect" (1991:149) in
order to illustrate my view of semantic meaning:

1) John has arrived.

2) #John has arrived yesterday.

There are no problems with 1), but 2) is ungrammatical, since Perfect
sentences with specifying adverbials du not appear in English. From this I
draw the conclusion that there is an intrinsic property of the Perfect verb
that forbids it to be used with adverbials signifying the past, and that
this property cannot be cancelled by the context. This is "semantic meaning"
as I define it. This property is not found in preterit verbs.

> >  >Have you noticed, though, that Rolf never concedes anything himself?
> >
> > Yes, and it is concerning to me. As Peter says this debate has been going
> > on for ten years or so. Mostly I've just watched. It appears to me to be
> > going nowhere. Some list members have suggested the apparent
> > misunderstanding is a religiously motivated behaviour. I tend to give
> > people the benefit of the doubt, so I'm currently of the opinion that the
> > misunderstanding is real.
>
> Like I said, Rolf has been presented with evidence time and again with
> seeming errors but chooses often not to reply. Often his reply restates
> his position. The debate will continue to go nowhere if this remains the
> case as it will not be able to get beyond the the issues which have been
> raised but not dealt with satisfactorily. For me, I'm going to write a
> longer publishable review of Rolf's work and then move on.
>
>
> > Bill Rea, ICT Services, University of Canterbury \_
> > E-Mail bill.rea at canterbury.ac.nz                </   New
> > Phone 64-3-364-2331, Fax  64-3-364-2332        /)  Zealand
> > Unix Systems Administrator
>
> Regards,
> David Kummerow.
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo