Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear list-members,

As I already have mentioned, David Kummerow have several times 
misrepresented my dissertation. Because of what he has written, the 
concept "uncanceallable meaning" has got an enormous focus, and it 
has appeared that my dissertation is centered around this concept and 
that the conclusions stands and falls with this concept.

As a matter of fact, the concept itself plays a very little role in 
my work. What plays a very important role, however, is the 
distinction between semantics and pragmatics, for example between 
past tense and past reference. And I ascribe much more to pragmatics 
than most grammars and textbooks do. For example, those who say that 
WAYYIQTOL represents past tense has given the form a semantic 
meaning, while I argue that the past reference of the many WAYYIQTOLs 
are pragmatic. So I go in the opposite direction of what is suggested 
by David's focus on uncancellable meaning.

But of course, in order to distinguish between semantics and 
pragmatics, one must know the contents of both concepts. So I will 
strongly state that uncancellable meaning do exist. I would like to 
make a final test regarding this. I claim that the Hebrew verb $YR 
(sing) has the properties dynamicity (change) and durativity (the 
action continues for some time). I further claim that these 
properties are uncancellable, i.e., there is no context where the 
verb $YR will cease to be durative and dynamic. So I challenge those 
who deny that uncancellable meaning exists to show that my claim is 
wrong. If they cannot do that, they should admit that uncancellable 
meaning do exist.



Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo