Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Bill,

An important problem with much of this thread and the corresponding threads 
is that
some list-members without a linguistic background are not able to see the
real issues; they bring "counter-examples" that miss the mark, since thay
are not trained in ascertaining which parts of the clauses convey which
meaning.

I would like to illustrate the point by a quote from J. Norlander (1997:17) 
"Towards a
Semantics of Linguistic Time". He quotes the following assertion:

"A verb may shift from one category to another. "Have," for example, is 
usually stative:
"She has two sisters." But it has a dynamic sense in "We have dinner at
Maxim´s quite frequently.""

Norlander points out two errors in the quote. First he states that 
""have"-as
an isolated verb nucleus-is ALWAYS a stative verb". Interestingly, according
to the linguist Norlander, the stative property of "have" is uncancellable, 
since it "always" holds.
Regarding the second error I will bring a longer quote:

"They overlook the fact that the verbal situation "have dinner" is a state
situation because of the fact that we cannot discern any different phases in
this situation. Either you are in a state of having dinner or you are not.
It may be the case that "having dinner" involves a number of different
courses, of changes of plates, etc., but this does not alter the fact that
an analysis of "have dinner" should in fact yield the answer that here we
have a stative verb, "have," in a state situation, "have dinner". Thus, when
Greenbaum & Quirk refer to the main verb "have" in the sentence "We have
dinner at Maxim´s quite frequently" as having a dynamic sense, they are in
reality referring to the fact that the verbal situation "have dinner"
occurs at a certain irregular frequency, overtly manifested in the adverbial
"quite frequently", that gives the situation the so-called dynamic sense. It
makes  the state "have dinner" a part of a superordinate situation which
indeed is dynamic since it is a process, that is, the process of "repeatedly
having dinner". This, however, has no bearing whatsoever on the fact that
"have" is a stative verb, and that "have dinner" is a state."

This is an excellent example of the importance of distinguishing between
which factors in a clause and its context that signal which meanings.

I will also bring a quote regarding "invariant meaning" (p.29):

"The (verbal) nucleus itself will be assumed to carry an INVARIANT
dynamicity value. this assumption is akin to the axiomatic claim of
Tobin(1994:8-9) that
*(...) the concept of invariant meaning is that ALL the discourse and
contextual functions, usages, and "meanings", i.e. in sign-oriented
terms -ALL the MESSAGES associated with a linguistic sign - are derived from
and accounted for by the invariant meaning itself.*
By this is not to say that, in the framework of the present study, Krio verb
R)N, which translates as "run" in English and "springa" in Swedish, would
necessarily cover exactly the same semantic ground as its closest English
and Swedish equivalents. The only claim it makes is that the basic,
underlying CONCEPT "run", in whatever lexicalized guise it appears, will
carry the same dynamicity value, cross-linguistically."

I am perfectly aware of the flexibility of language and how languages all
the time change. The last quote, however, shows that linguists do not agree
with the linguistic anarchy that have been voiced on this list (PANTA REI).
In the view of Norlander it is possible to identify absolutes in languges.
The assumption of "invariant meaning" appears to be much wider than the
"semantic meaning" proposed by Broman Olsen and myself, since it also works
across languages. Moreover, Broman Olsen and I do not *assume* the existence
of semantic meaning, but we accept it only when it can be demonstrated.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Rea" <bsr15 AT cantsl.it.canterbury.ac.nz>
To: "Peter Kirk" <peter AT qaya.org>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 12:57 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Uncancelable meaning


snip

> 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 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.
>
> 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                    (/'

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo