Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Phil Sumpter" <philsumpter AT hotmail.com>]

Dear Karl,

if Ps 24:3-5 is a XYDH riddle, then would you translate the verbs as "who 
>would be< allowed to ascend ..." (rather than "who is allowed")? It seems to 
me that if it is a riddle of some sort, designed to motivate someone to think 
about the answer, the mood would be subjunctive and not indicative. 

Philip Sumpter

http://narrativeandontology.blogspot.com/
>From J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk  Wed Jun 24 07:09:00 2009
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Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:08:49 +0100
From: James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>
To: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
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Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs
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It's all relative.

Which is faster?

a) To run quickly?
b) To jog quickly?
c) To walk quickly?
d) To plod quickly?

James Christian

Quoting David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>:

>
> Hi Rolf,
>
> It seems to me that you are operating with a syllogism that might be
> appropriate from your science background, but one that is not
> necessarily appropriate for language.
>
> With "plod" here's how your syllogism seems to be working:
>
> "plod" means "slow" because this meaning cannot be cancelled > because
> this meaning cannot be cancelled, there is an "uncancellable meaning" to
> "plod" > since I have demonstrated that "plod" has an "uncancellable
> meaning", I have therefore demonstrated that "uncancellable meaning"
> exists and is appropriate elsewhere in language such as in verbal systems.
>
> This is wrong -- all you have demonstrated is that English "plod" has a
> tight semantic field, not that "uncancellable meaning" is appropriate
> wholesale across language. This type of thing has already been raised
> with you by Stoney Brewer on this list. Besides, your claim that "plod"
> must always have the meaning "slow" may not be true, as "plod" can not
> just trigger a concept of speed, but also the movement performed. The
> so-called uncancellable meaning of "plod" can in some contexts be
> cancelled, as in the this sentence which is acceptable in my English
> dialect:
>
> (1) I plodded quickly through the mud to the garage.
>
> So if the so-called "uncancellable meaning" of "plod" is not "slow",
> evidenced by the fact that "plod" can co-occur with "quickly" as in (1),
> then what is it?
>
> I note that you have did not interact with the number of pages I
> presented in my review where the evidence of "uncancellable meaning" is
> entirely lacking, eg demonstrative and anaphoric multifunctionality,
> conjunctions, modal multifunctionality, person, number and gender
> multifunctionality, etc., etc. All of this evidence establishes the fact
> that "uncancellable meaning" is not a linguistic category which is
> appropriate wholesale across language. This means that "uncancellable
> meaning" might exist in a verbal system, or it might not, since
> "uncancellable meaning" is not intrinsic to language. In my review, I
> even presented references where it has been shown that even your
> so-called "uncancellable" procedural traits have been shown to be
> cancellable!
>
> All this means that a linguistic work cannot assume that "uncancellable
> meaning" exists in language, and must exist in a verbal system, as yours
> has done.
>
> Regards,
> David Kummerow.
>
>
>>
>> Subject:
>> [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs
>> From:
>> Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
>> Date:
>> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:55:13 +0200
>> To:
>> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
>>
>> To:
>> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
>>
>>
>> Dear list-members,
>>
>> David Kummerow brought up the question about "uncancellable meaning" and
>> indicated his strong feeling against the claim that such meaning exists.
>> So I think it is fine to say something about it. The approach I have
>> used in my study of Hebrew verbs is diametrically opposed to the
>> discourse approach of Niccacci and others. Discourse analysis describes
>> functions and patterns, but I have been looking for the *meaning* of
>> each verb form. My question has been whether it is possible to speak of
>> meaning, and if so, whether it is possible to describe this meaning.
>> Therefore I have been looking for characteristics of verbs that remain
>> the same regardless of the outward circumstances. I understand David to
>> mean that such an approach is not possible, because meaning that always
>> is the same and can never be cancelled does not exist. This is the
>> issue, and I will now demonstrate that David is wrong.
>>
>> Mari Broman Olsen wrote the dissertation "A Semantic and Pragmatic Model
>> of lexical and Grammatical Aspect," and it was published in 1997.  She
>> discussed the English and New Testament Greek verbal systems, and her
>> basic approach was to distinguish between "concersational pragmatic
>> implicature" (meaning that is derived from the context and may change
>> (be cancellable) and "semantic meaning" (meaning that always will be the
>> same and never can be cancelled). She got her Ph.D in linguistics, and
>> she would not have achieved that if "uncancellable meaning" is not a
>> viable linguistic concept. I got my Ph.D with a similar approach to
>> Hebrew verbs.
>>
>> Broman Olsen gives the following example to illustrate the existence of
>> uncancellable meaning:
>>
>> This principle Broman Olsen takes from the linguist H. P. Grice, and it
>> is that "semantic meanings may not be cancelled without contradiction or
>> reinforced without redundancy".
>>
>> We can ask: Are the concepts "tired" and "slow" a part of the semantic
>> meaning of "plod"? Example 1) is contradictory, 2) is redundant, but 3)
>> and 4) are normal. This means that "slow" is a part of the semantic
>> meaning of "plod" (there are no situations when "slow" can be cancelled
>> or separated from "plod". But "tired" is not a part of the semantic
>> meaning; people who are plodding along may or may not be tired.
>>
>> 1) Elsie plodded along, #but not slowly.
>>
>> 2) Elsie plodded along, #slowly.
>>
>> 3) Margaret plodded along, although she was not tired.
>>
>> 4) Margaret plodded along; she was very tired.
>>
>> These examples show clearly that "semantic meaning" do exist!  In
>> connection with verbs, we may also distinguish between semantic meaning
>> and conversational pragmatic implicature. A verb who is viewed as
>> stative, may also be fientive ("The ship floats," versus "The ship was
>> afloat."). So stativity cannot be classified as semantic meaning. The
>> same is true with verbs that are viewed as punctiliar (some say,
>> punctual); such verbs may have a durative interpretation in some
>> situations. But in three groups of verbs we can speak of semantic meaning.
>>
>> When a verb is marked for telicity, this property is uncancellable. I
>> use the expression "marked for," because verbs, and phrases, and clauses
>> can be made telic by addition of particular words. Thus, 4) is
>> non-telic, and 5) is telic because of the adverbial. So telicity per se
>> does not represent semantic meaning. But some verbs "are born" telic, so
>> to speak, and they can never loose their telicity. Because of this we
>> can say that they are marked for telicity (the end is conceptually a
>> part of the Aktionsart of the verb).
>>
>> 4) Peter walked on the street.
>>
>> 5) Peter walked to his office.
>>
>> In English, pharasal verbs are often marked for telicity, such as "break
>> through; pass away; fall apart" etc. They can never loos thir telicity.
>>
>> Other properties of verbs apart from telicity that are uncancellable are
>> dynamicity (=change) and durativity (an action or state continues for
>> some time).  To apply this to 2 Samuel 12:3, the verbs $TH and )KL are
>> both marked for dynamicity (the actions of eating and drinking change
>> through time) and for  durativity (the actions go on for a time).
>> Regardless of whether these verbs are expressed as YIQTOLs, WAYYIQTOLs,
>> QATALs, infinitives or participles, they will always remain durative and
>> dynamic.
>>
>> Those who deny the existence of "semantic meaning," must demonstrate
>> that verbs that are marked for durativity, dynamicity, or telicity can
>> loose these properties.
>>
>> On the basis of the fact that semantic meaning do exist, in the work
>> with the Hebrew verbal system, I systematically distinguished between
>> pragmatics and semantics. And this has never systematically been done in
>> in studies in BH or the other ancient Semitic language. This means
>> particularly that I distinguish between temporal reference and tempus,
>> which is an elementary linguistic distinction. So why no one has done
>> this in Semitic studies is strange.
>>
>> In practical application, this distinction between pragmatics and
>> semantics means that when I analyze 93.1% of the WAYYIQTOLs as having
>> past reference, I am not prepared to say that this means that they
>> represent past tense. Neither would I say that this shows that they
>> represent the perfective aspect, because this aspect normally is used
>> with past reference in aspectual language. I did not exclude these
>> possibilities when I started my study, but I took different steps to try
>> to illuminate the situation.
>>
>> First, I asked if we see a grammaticalization process that is almost
>> completed. Grammaticalization means that a verb form with several uses
>> or functions, gradually over time looses one function after the other,
>> until it eventually has only one function. Such a process would be
>> discernible in the books of the Tanakh; we would expect to see more
>> different uses of WAYYIQTOL in the older books compared with the younger
>> ones. But that is not the case, so I exclude any grammaticalization
>> process.
>>
>> Second, I asked whether past reference of so many WAYYIQTOLs was
>> pragmatic rather than semantic, and after an analysis of thousands of
>> examples, I concluded that this was the case.
>>
>> The points above may illustrate the issue, and I stop with this. But the
>> point is that uncancellable semantic meaning do exist, and because of
>> this, it is profitable to study dead languages with this in mind.
>>
>>
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Rolf Furuli
>> University of Oslo
>>
>
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