Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Hello Karl,

The term is used as a participle.  A participle is one form of a verb
that shares
various linguistic properties with adjectives and nouns.  The fact
that it is used
in the verses as a noun does not mean it stops being a participle.  Rolf is
very explicit about the lack of uncancelability in dynamic participles:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew/2004-September/020896.html

In this post you can see the implication of cancelability.  Verbs marked for
dynamicity cannot be canceled.  But verbs marked for stativity can.  For
example, "I'm just loving it."  The verb "love" is not stative according to
Olsen.  This means that it is not marked for dynamicity.  As a result, it
can change to dynamic interpretations based on context as in "I'm just
loving it."

So, based on context, a verb not "marked for dynamicity" can gain a
dynamic meaning.  This is because (according to Olsen) a verb cannot be
"marked for stativity."  If it could, it could not gain a dynamic meaning.
That's the point of cancelability and statitivity, as it applies to Olsen, and
presumably Rolf's understanding.  (Rolf had gone quiet the last few days,
so I guess he's been busy with other things).

But here we have a case where the context causes the participle of a
verb marked for dynamicity to lose its dynamic attributes.  That this is
a participle used as a noun is not the issue, because in Olsen's view,
"marked features ([+dynamic]) may not be changed by other sentential
constituents."  When the context changes "I have a cold" (a stative
interpretation) to "I'm having dinner" (a dynamic interpretation) it is said
to show that "have"'s "stativity" is "cancelable."  It is the dissonance
between the meaning of the verb given a specific context and form and
the more general meaning of the verb that makes for its cancelability.
So why is "NZL", "$YR", or "RWC"'s "dynamicity" not also canceled in
these examples?

In your post you go back to the general meaning of the verb, but the
question is whether context can cancel that general meaning in
specific instances.

Yitzhak Sapir