Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 29/03/2007 00:57, Bill Rea wrote:
> ...
> Also, I think you're misrepresenting Rolf on this point. He's talked
> about conversational pragmatic implicature over many years and
> I think this is what he's on about. I could be wrong on that
> point, of course. ...

I suspect you are misunderstanding him here. For Rolf, "conversational 
pragmatic implicature" is not uncancellable, but is opposed to semantic 
meaning which is uncancellable. But for him "conversational pragmatic 
implicature" cannot cancel uncancellable semantic meaning, although it 
seems that special usages can.

> ... I personally think that ``uncancellable''
> is a poor choice of word to describe what is, I think, what most
> people would understand by the dictionary meaning of a word, but
> in one sense it is right. One-offs and limited colloquialisms don't
> change the dictionary. So, in one sense, the meaning is not cancelled.
> It takes a major shift like what has happened to the word ``nice''
> to cancel the past accepted usage.
>
>   
The problem is that major shifts happen gradually. "Bad" meaning "good" 
is much more widespread than it was in the 1960's, it is now common 
among young white people here in England, and no doubt it is also 
included in up to date dictionaries. I'm sure that the meaning of "nice" 
changed similarly gradually. At what point do we say this has changed 
from a special usage which can cancel the uncancellable (so not 
"conversational pragmatic implicature") to semantic meaning? I suppose 
in English we just might say that this happens when some respected 
dictionary or book of style accepts the usage, but there was no such 
books for biblical Hebrew.

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