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  • From: "Eric Inman" <eric-inman AT comcast.net>
  • To: "'David Kummerow'" <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>, <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs
  • Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:18:27 -0500

Well, I'm not a linguist, and I'm not able to follow everything that's being
mentioned in this discussion, but the multiple functions you enumerate for
"plod" also seem to share some things in common, the idea of movement toward
a goal, for example. The same for the different functions of "that" that you
mentioned. If you allow arbitrary levels of abstraction is seems that you
would usually find some commonality in all the uses of a given word or other
language feature. I would also guess that usually the more abstract the
common meaning is the less bearing it might have on the meanings of the
individual usages. Nevertheless, I would be comfortable with this notion
being utilized as part of a linguistic analysis. Of course I would also want
to bear in mind the different subsets of common meaning shared by different
subsets of usages, etc.

Eric Inman

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of David Kummerow
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2009 9:13 PM
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs


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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