Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear David,

The matter is not so much one of English fluency or the intuition of a
native speaker, as one of linguistic analysis, including the definition of a
state, and an understanding of how different parts of a clause convey 
meaning. I
am trained in this, and
when I read his words, I immediately agreed with Nordlander. The example can
be compared with Rainey´s claim, which I criticised early in our discussion,
that the clause with "day and night" showed that the force of a verb form
was progressive. However, an example with IPRUS together with "day and
night" showed that the progressive force was caused by the adverbial and not
by the verb form. I again stress that a difference between semantics and
pragmatics is based on the ability to see which factors in a clause convey
which meaning. People who are not trained in linguistics have great problems
here; including Rainey who is an excellent Semitist, but who apparrently
lack training in linguistics.

I quoted the other point of Nordlander that "have-as an isolated verbal
nucleus-is ALWAYS a stative verb,"  in order to show that other linguists
also operate with uncancellable meaning.  I have not seen all such
"have"-clauses in English, and therefore I could not do anything but refer
to his words.

A new book of mine will be published in May, and I am very busy with the
finishing work. So I do not want to continue this discussion.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Kummerow" <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 10:36 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Uncancelable meaning


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.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo