Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Hi Rolf,

I notice below that it seems the English expression is wider than 
Australian English. I'll add a bit more so that the English is plain for 
you and so your linguistic theory might stop blinding you to the reality 
of the English expression.

Suppose an English teacher was up the front of class and she was getting 
the students to think about the word "have". Supposed she asked "what do 
you have?" The default construal of this would be that the question is 
one of possession, either as in a) below as a question of owned 
possessions or physical attributes as in b):

a) I have a cat (= I own/possess a cat)

b) I have a big nose (= I possess a big nose)

Both are stative situations.

The answer in a) can refer to possessions currently with them at their 
desk or not (as in a) above where the cat is most likely at home, but 
could be at school on a show-and-tell day):

c) I have a blue pen

Since our present discussion revolves around eating, here's another 
possible answer to the question:

d) I have a plate of dinner

This can only be construed that a plate with the student's dinner is on 
their desk or at least in their immediate vicinity at the moment of 
speaking. Again, the construal is stative.

However, suppose the teacher were to ask "What do you have at Maxim's?" 
This could be answered in a few ways, for example:

e) I have a large plate of chips

Notice how the construal by the student is as a question asking about 
what the student usually orders at Maxim's, ie it is a question as to 
what they usually eat. Although e) has the same syntactic structure as 
a) to d) above, semantically it differs as it now is construed as an 
action and not a state, ie it is not a "state of eating a large plate of 
chips" but that "a large plate of chips is usually eaten or consumed". 
"Have" here could be replaced with "eat" without any difference in 
meaning as in f), which would be an entirely acceptable alternative 
answer to the teacher's question:

f) I eat a large plate of chips

Further, another possible answer is as in g) and h):

g) We have breakfast at Maxim's (quite frequently)

h) We have dinner at Maxim's (quite frequently)

Here, the student has construed the question to be not so much about 
individual menu items, but about mealtimes. "Quite frequently" is 
optional and simply adds what is implicit in the reply. Both answers 
above could also we given as:

i) We eat breakfast at Maxim's (quite frequently)

j) We eat dinner at Maxim's (quite frequently)

The "eating" here is not stative as you suggest, but as a gnomic and 
perfective act of eating: this is what the student and family commonly do.

So as you can hopefully see, "have" can be both stative and active 
meanings. If is construed as about possession it is stative; if it is 
construed as about eating it is active. These are but two examples of 
"have", but they do demonstrate the variability of English where the 
same syntactic structure may have two (or more) possible readings.

Is this convincing?

Regards,
David Kummerow.



> Dear David:
>
> In this case I have to agree with you.
>
> On 3/30/07, David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo at hotmail.com> wrote:
>  > Hi Rolf,
>  >
>  > Let me say again: "have" in the example you cite is commonly used
>  > throughout Australia to mean "to eat" and not "to be in a state of
>  > eating". My intuition here is that it might even NEVER occur with the
>  > meaning you assign. The "linguistic analysis" here you present is just
>  > plain wrong as you force a meaning to my words which I just do not mean.
>  > A true linguistic representation of the sentence you cite with the
>  > assigned meaning should actually be given a # in the front or something
>  > to show that this meaning is absurd to native speakers.
>  >
>  > "Had" can also be used in the same manner: "We had dinner at Maxim's".
>  > This equates to "We ate dinner at Maxim's".
>  >
>  > To repeat: Despite your linguistic intuitions here, they are in conflict
>  > with how the phrase would be understood by English speakers in
>  > Australia, perhaps elsewhere too I would say.
>  >
> What you state is accurate for American English as well.
>
>  > In this case you really should withdraw your statements and admit you
>  > were wrong.
>  >
>  > Regards,
>  > David Kummerow.
>  >
>  >
> In this case, I'm thankful that English is my mother tongue. Even a
> millennium after the Norman invasion, English is still somewhat of a
> creole, with oddities and exceptions galore. Though it is a relatively
> simple language to learn its basics, it is one of the most difficult
> languages to master.
>
> Rolf: you are wrong here. You have run into one of those oddities and
> exceptions of English. Your command of the English language is quite
> good, better than many, but native speakers recognize that you have
> erred on this issue in English.
>
> Too bad there are no surviving speakers of Biblical Hebrew to show
> where "we got it wrong".
>
> Yours, Karl W. Randolph.