Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Hi Rolf,

As a native English speaker, I also have problems with the stative 
analysis you present below. Stoney and Peter have already said much. I 
would like to add that to me "have dinner" has less to do with "be in a 
state of dining" and much more to do with "eating diner". That is, "We 
have dinner at Maxim's quite frequently" is, for me, equivalent to 
saying "We eat dinner at Maxim's quite frequently" but is absurd if it 
is meant to mean "We are-in-a-state-of-dining at Maxim's quite 
frequently." In other words, the meaning involves (at least to me as one 
English speaker) an action and not a state. So the analysis of "have" 
below is entirely forced to me. Although I use such a phrasing, I do not 
use it to say what you understand to be the meaning, but what I have 
just described.

In any case, this example is unlike the other "have" example I 
previously presented (which involves a different construction) which you 
may obliquely be responding to here(?).

Regards,
David Kummerow.


> 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