Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

David:

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 3:43 PM, David Kummerow<farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com> 
wrote:
>
> Hi Karl,
>
> By "standard", I was referring to use of the lexeme in my own use and
> what I hear around me. It is standard to hear such "plod" examples. At
> the end of the day, you still must reckon with such data.

Using your standard above, except applying it to me and the way I have
heard and read the term, your examples are nonsense. Oxymoron. They do
not communicate. To the people around me, you are Humpty Dumpty, willy
nilly changing the meanings of words for your own purposes with no eye
towards communicating to the world.

The question then becomes, who is correct? Which use is the standard
use that people can refer to for effective communication? When
checking reference works from international sources, if they agreed
with you, then I would have to reconsider my understanding of the term
in order to communicate with the world at large. But they don’t.
Without exception, all the reference works I consulted give a meaning
that is consistent with what I hear, and at variance with yours.
Therefore, I can conclude that your data is non-standard, dialectal,
not only can be, but should be, ignored when dealing with standard
usage (possibly mentioned in a footnote).

> Like I've
> repeatedly asked: what is the uncancellable meaning/semantics of "plod"
> for such people whose examples I listed are entirely acceptable?

Because we are dealing with non-standard, dialectal use, the question
is irrelevant.

> At some
> point, the "uncancellable meaning" of "plod" that existed in your own
> so-called "international standard English" actually was cancelled -- and
> these days now to the point that the use does not sound "weird", is not
> poetic, is not some extreme use, etc. How can this occur if semantics is
> said to be uncancellable meaning? And what is the uncancellable meaning
> that is now the result? What is the "uncancellable meaning" of "plod"
> across the examples I gave?
>
Your questions are nonsense, based on the above.

> By the way, adding "slow" to plod is not redundant for me in example (2)
> I gave, it just specifies that the "plodding" action is "slow" rather
> than "fast". it is unnecessary to specify it in (3).
>
> Regards,
> David Kummerow.
>
>
I said it before, but now will say it again because apparently you
didn’t understand: uncancellable meaning often does not cross
dialectal or language boundaries. In fact, that is one of the
definitions of dialectal use, namely that it varies from standard use,
that the rules that apply to the standard do not apply to the
dialectal use. This is also why I say we need to be very cautious when
applying linguistic concepts learned from cognate languages when
studying Biblical Hebrew, because what is uncancellable meaning in
Biblical Hebrew, may actually have the opposite understanding in a
cognate language.

Because you apparently don’t understand what Rolf wrote about, your
criticism of Rolf’s work is flawed.

Note, I have not defended Rolf, he may be wrong too, but your
arguments and criticism that you have presented so far has been based
on dialectal experience and solipsism, hardly the grounds for
dispassionate, scholarly study.

Karl W. Randolph.