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  • From: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs
  • Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:13:15 +1000


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






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