Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Hi Eric,

In the examples raised by Yitzhak, there isn't any contextual contrast 
implied. That is, "plodding" isn't being contrasted with some other 
"faster" action. In the language use I hear and use myself, "plod 
quickly" uses have semantics to do either with the walking action itself 
(having to tramp/plod through mud or something) or with the sound or 
heaviness of the walking action.

Generally, the semantics of "plod" have to do with the bodily movement 
of walking. But this can be cancelled when the word is applied to a 
different frame as in "Elsie plodded through her exam". No notion of 
walking there. Also, as I stated in my email to which you replied, it is 
also not really appropriate to say that "slow" is what "plod" means. 
Rather, "plod" has a range of meanings: (1) "to walk slowly"; (2) "to 
perform the task denoted by an adjunct phrase slowly"; (3) and "to walk 
heavily" etc. The action of "walking" is common to (1) and (3), while 
the speed ("slow") is common to (1) and (2). But there is not a common 
semantics to all three functions. Also, even if we were to simply 
disregard (3) as Karl wants to do, there's still the problem with (1) 
and (2): "plod" does mean a walking action as well as performing other 
actions slowly. That is, we can't say that the meaning of "walking" in 
"Elsie plodded" is pragmatic, because that meaning is its default 
construal. It's just that the term has a few functions is all. Nothing 
surprising in that for me as multifunctionality is the norm in language. 
But something Karl and Rolf seem to have all sorts of problems coming to 
terms with.

Multifunctionality in language is so common and everyday that we often 
don't notice it. Take English "that" in the examples below:

(1) That man over there is my father.

(2) … right at that moment the three boys came walking by, munching on 
the pears … (Himmelmann 1996: 225)

(3) I couldn’t sleep last night. That dog (next door) kept me awake 
(Gundel, et al. 1993: 278).

(4) Webber 1988: 116
    a. Hey, they’ve promoted Fred to second vice president.
    b. i. That’s a lie.
       ii. That’s a funny way to describe the situation.
       iii. When did that happen?
       iv. That’s a weird thing for them to do.

In (1) "that" is deictic. In (2) "that" is discourse deictic, which also 
covers the examples in (4). (4bi) refers to the illocutionary force of 
the previous statement; (4bii) refers to the choice of linguistic 
expression; (4biii) refers to the event; and (4biv) refers to the action 
of the statement. In (3) "that" is a recognitional demonstrative, 
referring to the assumed common knowledge between the speaker and 
addressee and so without any deictic meaning at all. Such examples 
cannot be discerned as having a meaning which is uncancellably present.

Gundel, Jeanette K., Nancy Hedberg, and Ron Zacharski. 1993. “Cognitive 
Status and the Form of Referring Expressions in Discourse.” Language 69: 
274-307.

Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 1996. “Demonstratives in Narrative Discourse: A 
Taxonomy of Universal Uses.” Pages 205-254 in Studies in Anaphora. 
Edited by Barbara Fox. Typological Studies in Language 33. 
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Webber, Bonnie L. 1988. “Discourse Deixis: Reference to Discourse 
Segments.” Pages 113-122 in Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting on 
Association for Computational Linguistics. New York: Association for 
Computational Linguistics.

Regards,
David Kummerow.


> Someone mentioned a while back the idea of meanings being relative, and I
> haven't noticed anyone responding to that.
>
> With "plod quickly", I would take that to mean plodding faster than the
> norm, but it still would be slow as compared to walking quickly or running
> quickly, etc. Thus the idea of "slow" would still be associated with plod as
> an initial reference which can then be modified in one direction or the
> other. I don't know how this fits in with the idea of cancellation.
>
> Eric Inman