Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs
  • Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:57:34 +1000


Yitzhak's examples are exactly of the type I was meaning. Let's look at "plod" a little more closely.

Rolf claimed "that 'slow' is a part of the semantic meaning of "plod" (there are no situations when 'slow' can be cancelled or separated from 'plod')." So the example:

(1) Elsie plodded along.

What is meant by (1) is not "slow", but "slow walking", ie dawdling. Such a conceptualisation can be extended to acts of non-walking in the form of [slowly perform action associated with x], where 'x' is generally represented by an adjunct phrase.

(2) Elsie plodded through the exam.

Perhaps because "plod" is associated with a walking action, it can also loose the meaning of "slow" and designate instead something similar to "tramping", at least for some dialects of English. So to use Yitzhak's example:

(3) Even though the horse was not afraid of the dead animal, he was still pleased to be leaving and needed no urging to plod quickly downhill.

In (3) we see that "plod" can cooccur with "quickly". Now, Rolf said that that to use an adverb like "slowing" in conjunction with "plod" would be redundant, since "plod" already has this meaning as part of its uncancellable meaning. However, if we substitute "quickly" for "slowly" in the above example, we see that we have two very different conceptualisations:

(4) Even though the horse was not afraid of the dead animal, he was still pleased to be leaving and needed no urging to plod slowly downhill.

As such, we see that the notion of "slow" in relation to "plod" can in fact undergo cancellation. The question for Rolf would be: what is the uncancellable meaning of "plod" for dialects of English which accept (3)? (For me, even (1) and (2) are not the same either as I indicated above.) If "plod" is to have some sort of semantics under a methodology which adheres to the principal that semantics represents meaning which cannot be cancelled, then what is the meaning of "plod"? Or do we just say that "plod" has no semantics in such a dialect and that any meaning it has is simply pragmatic meaning which can be cancelled?

Regards,
David Kummerow.



On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 8:03 PM, Stoney Breyer wrote:
> I concur with Karl respecting "plod"; indeed, I would go further and say that "slow" is in
> fact uncancellable in "plod" and that "plod quickly" is an oxymoron in *any* English
> dialect.

>From a google search on "plod quickly":
http://www.amazon.com/Toscco-Happy-Family/dp/B000007TIP
"The compositions can plod quickly along over massive speed bumps; they can also
slow down to take in the scenery."

http://disapprovingblue.net/finished/the_order/order15.html
"He heard the little boy's footsteps plod quickly up to it."

http://books.google.com/books?id=s6U_mYyH1iMC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=plod
"Even though the horse was not afraid of the dead animal, he was still
pleased to be
leaving and needed no urging to plod quickly downhill."

If we go ahead and claim that "Just that within a particular language
at a particular
time words may have meanings that are uncancellable" where a
"particular language"
may indicate a specific sociolect -- "in the variety of English that I
grew up learning,
namely that of the upper Midwest of the United States." What in this
case is the
particular language and time of the entire Bible?

Yitzhak Sapir





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page