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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Uncancelable meaning

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Uncancelable meaning
  • Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:21:20 +0100

On 05/04/2007 15:43, Rolf Furuli wrote:
Dear David,

I copied your post below and the post of Stoney Breyer, and asked Dr. Johan Nordlander for his comments. I have copied his reply below.

...

Now, what these critics do not understand is the fact that the meaning value of any word or morpheme taken in isolation IS a question of semantics. Only when you add additional language elements and/or extralinguistic factors do things open up for interpretation, that is, pragmatics. This means that what the commentators below discuss is not the meaning/semantics of the verb itself, but the meaning (message) of the entire utterances.

I don't think it is fair of Dr Nordlander to accuse these critics of not understanding this point. But the critics are not interested in the meaning/semantics of words in isolation, but of the meaning of entire utterances. And it is clear to us from these examples that certain components of the semantic meaning of individual words in an utterance are not in fact part of the meaning of the entire utterance, because they have been cancelled by the context in the utterance. Indeed this can be true of a phrase or idiom, which can have a meaning not compatible with the meaning of its component parts. A good example is indeed the phrasal verb "have dinner", which has semantic components different from those of the verb "have" in isolation.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://www.qaya.org/blog/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/





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