Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

It is interesting that various speakers note their own experience and
perceptions of "plod quickly."   In the case of "have dinner" discussed
on the list a long time ago, Rolf would not accept such perceptions
as influencing his own (as well as Norlander's) conclusions regarding
cancellability.

Rolf repeatedly asks for Dave to "prove" his position, despite the
fact that it is Rolf who holds the non-standard point of view, and the
burden of proof is upon him.  For example, he wrote, "As long as you
have not shown that the dynamicity and durativity of verbs like "sing"
and "run" can be cancelled, you have failed to prove tha uncancellable
meaning does not exist."  Rolf previously cited Kaltner's review of
his book as a positive review.  It is better described as lukewarm,
welcoming new methods and viewpoints, even if it doesn't buy into
the theory itself.  One of Kaltner's problems with Rolf's study is that
Rolf hasn't stood up to the full burden of proof as he doesn't provide
comprehensive data.  This is actually a problem that was raised on
list and is one example where peer review would have been useful
("peer review" being the method of reviewing a book prior to its
publication in order to sift out problematic points -- sometimes the
whole study itself -- before publication).

The problem Rolf faces is probably insurmountable.  Even if Hebrew
did have uncancellable properties of some words, how would one
prove it?  One can argue that some property is cancellable by showing
an instance where the property is canceled.  But how can one show
that a property is uncancellable.  To show that, we need to know the
infinite corpus of semantically meaningful sentences, and this we do
not have, because native speakers are not around.  We cannot go to
native speakers the way the discussion handled "plod" or "have
dinner," and ask if it is at all possible that "plod quickly" is meaningful.
(In the case of "plod", we see the clear issue that native speakers
will not always be in agreement.  Even the definitions Karl offered did
not always mark "plod" as "slow", generally marking it as "heavy."
Indeed, if one googles for "plod lightly" one finds only 19 uses
(not all valid) -- one valid example being in the New Yorker.  So, it
seems "heavy" is a less cancellable property of "plod" than "slow",
although both may be cancelled).

An interesting example of a sentence is Douglas Adams' ingenious
"The huge golden ship hung in the air in almost exactly the way a
brick doesn't."  In this case, "hung" had its stativity cancelled, but
it is not hard to come up with a similar example for dynamicity:
"As he sat down before the Senate committee investigating the
Corleone family, facing the prospects of the long arm of the Italian
mafia, Pentangeli spoke in almost exactly the way a fish doesn't."
It works because of the various images it evokes.  The sentence
effectively cancels "spoke" as a dynamic action and evokes his
silence as a stative situation.  Yet the silence speaks for itself.

In Biblical Hebrew, the following can be considered along the
same lines: "brwx ?pyk n(rmw mym, ncbw kmw nd nzlym."
"nd" refers to a bottle or a standing mass of water.  It cancels
out the dynamicity of "nzl" ("flow", "pour") in "nzlym" ("things
that flow").  It seems that the usage of nzlym in the construct
chain is intended to emphasize that the waters are no longer
flowing.  "nd nzlym" is thus a stative situation that cancels
out the dynamicity of "nzlym."

Rolf has several times suggested that David misreads him and
identifies cancellability as something central to his thesis when
it is not as central as David makes it out to be.  I can only point
out that from Kaltner's review, it seems that cancellability is
what distinguishes pragmatic factors from semantic factors, and
this is after all the topic of his book, "An attempt to distinguish
between semantic and pragmatic factors."

Again, the burden of proof is upon Rolf, but I think it is a situation
where the lack of native speakers directly impacts Rolf's ability
to prove this effectively.  Comprehensive cross-linguistic studies
are what is necessary here, in order to attempt to bypass this
problem.

Yitzhak Sapir