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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs
  • Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:35:05 +0200


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




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