Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

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.