Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [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] Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs
  • Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:55:51 +1000


Hi Rolf,

See below:

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.

Well, despite your claims, I can only see that it does indeed greatly impact the way you proceed. Because the principal of uncancellable meaning is used to interpret the results of the application of your principals. As so it is then on the basis of this that you then move to reject all past analyses and so claim that wayyiqtol is imperfective.


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.

This is getting rather tiring. So have you given up on "plod", or what? Now we move to "sing". But even if we were to conclude that "sing" has some component of uncancellable meaning, this why would this be appropriate to extrapolate to the verbal system? All we would have proven is that "sing" has some uncancellable meaning.

I've repeated asked you to deal with evidence I've raised against your position. Yet you fail to do so. Why?




Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


Regards,
David Kummerow.



  • Re: [b-hebrew] Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs, David Kummerow, 06/25/2009

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page