Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Dear David:

On 3/28/07, David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Karl,
>
> Perhaps I'm wrong. I realise your actually methodology is different --
> your working in lexicography, Rolf on the verbal system -- but are the
> assumptions different? That is, do you think any given lexeme will have
> some meaning which is consistent across its uses? This is what I got
> from your treatment of the Hithpael binyan: you were seeking to find
> something consistent between all the examples, which you gave as
> "reflexive". It really depends how tightly you hold to this and what you
> do with the examples that don't "fit".
>
> Regards,
> David Kummerow.
What defines "fit"? What about literary conventions? Irony? Sarcasm?
Euphemisms? Idioms? Hyperbole? Other uses where a non-standard use is
made of a lexeme and it is understood that that use is non-standard
and what it's actual meaning is?

Ironically, it is my understanding that lexemes have a single, basic
meaning that makes it easier to recognize and appreciate non-standard
uses. For example, the basic meaning of )BD is "to be lost", but it is
often used as a euphemism for "to die", much as we say "to pass away":
its use as a euphemism does not change its basic meaning.

Further, what does "basic meaning" mean? How does that relate to
translation? Interestingly, I first used that technique (looking for
basic meaning) to help me learn modern languages, before I applied it
to Biblical Hebrew. As for applying it to translation, I recognized
from the beginning that the basic meanings seldom correspond exactly
from language to language, not even close cognates, so while the basic
meaning in the language may be unitary, its translation may require
more than one term in the target language.

All of this has been discussed before on this list.

As for the binyanim, recognizing how each binyan functions in
affecting the use of verbs helps also in recognizing basic meanings of
verbs.

So I close as I began, how does one define "fit"?

Yours, Karl W. Randolph.