Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Uncancellable meaning and Hebrew verbs
  • Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 09:19:02 +0200

Dear James,

I will first give a sketch of my theory of meaning and communication. ( I started to work on this theory when I many years ago studied applied linguistics and psycholinguistics). In everyday speech we usually need not qualify the word "meaning," but in scholarly discussions we should tell whether we speak of lexical, grammatical, syntactical, pragmatic or semantic meaning. But that is rarely done.

As for communication, my view is that in the words of a language there is a potential for many different meanings, and communication means that particular parts of this potential is made visible for the listener or reader and the rest of the potential is kept invisible. Various tools are used to signal this.

Lexical meaning is not found in lexicons or Word books but in the minds of the native speakers of a particular language. In lexicons we only find glosses, i.e., the words in the target languages that are used to translate particular word in the source language. A word exists in the mind as a concept with a rather clear nucleus but the concept is fuzzy towards the edges. (Sometimes a word signals two or more concepts.) When a particular word, say a substantive, is used in a clause, the other words of that clause, or the wider context will help to see which part of the concept signalled by the words that is made visible and which parts are kept invisible. So the context does not generate new lexical meaning, but it makes visible what already is there, Here we should think of Ogden's "triangle of signification" with word, concept, and reference at the corners- the lexical meaning of a word is one thing, is reference is another. We may use the word NP$ as an example. The core of the concept signalled is a living creature (in BH never a spirit or a ghost). The same is true in Akkadian, but in Ge'ez, modern Hebrew, and Arabic the root may also refer to an invisible spirit. In different contexts NP$ can refer to living animals, living humans, to life, to the right to live, and even to a carcass (a dead soul that once was living). All these different *references* are allowed by the concept in the Hebrew mind and they do not represent new lexical meanings.

Verbs are used to signal actions and states, and in order to make visible all the subtleties of a particular action, more complex signals must be used. Each verb also signals a concept in the mind, and apart from verbs where two original roots have fused, the verb concept is sometimes "smaller" than the "noun concept. Each verb has a particular Aktionsart (or state): some are uncancellable and others are not. Different factors, such a singularity/plurality/definitenness/indefiniteness of the verbal arguments (subject and object) and adverbials can be used to signal a modification of the Aktionsart. A verb clause may refer to this world or to other possible worlds (being modal), and in Hebrew, this can be signalled by morphological means, by word order, and by the context. There are also other subtleties that can be made visible, such as the functions of subject and object relative to the action -active, passive, reflexive, causative etc. these are expressed by the stems. The native speakers of BH were interested in the time of the actions relative to the present moment, and this they could construe on the basis of the context, while most modern languages have tenses that are morphologically expressed.

Then we come to the aspects. My view is that the imperfective and the perfective aspect can be compared to peepholes through which different parts of the action are made visible. This means that aspects do not generate any new meaning, but they make visible something that already is there, and keep the rest invisible. Thus, the other words of the clause made visible a part of the concept signalled by a substantive, and the aspect made visible a particular part of the verb action. In my presentation these "peepholes" function on three planes:

1) The angle of the focus. This depends on whether reference time intersects event time, a) before its beginning (conative) action), b) including the beginning and a small part of the action (ingressive), c) progressive (action viewed after the beginning and before the end), d) egressive ( a part of the action and the end implied), and e) resultative (the focus is on the resulting state).

2) The breadth of the focus. This depends on the area of E that is intersected (and made visible) by R (a small part, a bigger part, or the whole of E).

3) The quality of the focus. This depends whether the details of a part of E is made visible or not.

It is obvious that most of the lexical meaning and the meaning of verb clauses is pragmatic, i.e., the meaning can be construed on the basis of the context. The minds of the native BH speakers could ascertain these different meanings, but it is much more difficult for us who try to ascertain the BH meaning on the basis of induction.

On the basis of the nature of meaning in BH, most of my dissertation deals with conversational pragmatic implicature. However, in order to communicate in an understandable way, there ought to be some fixed points that do not change. Otherwise we would have linguistic anarchy. Therefore, in my work with my dissertation I was looking for semantic meaning (uncancellable meaning). Such a meaning was not found in the temporal references of the verbs. I found no tense in the system, while a claim of WAYYIQTOL representing past tense, is tantamount to saying that it has a semantic meaning. In connection with the three different planes of the aspects I was also looking for semantic meaning; I was looking for characteristics of the imperfective aspect that was not found in the perfective one. I found two basic similarities and four differences. And in my analysis these differences constitute semantic meaning.

Above I have outlined my view of meaning, and let us continue. As you said in one post, meaning has changed and will change over time. But that is not necessary for all kinds of meaning. When I speak of "semantic meaning," this is a synchronic property. On the basis of my study of the texts of BH, I see some characteristics that I view to be early and later. But I see no evolution in the meaning of the verbal system. So, after a careful diachronic study I have a basis for treating the BH verbs as if they were synchronic.

Broman Olsen has refined the definitions of event time, reference time and deictic center compared with Reichenbach and Comrie, and I find that her discussion of tense and aspect in the English verbal system is superb- better than anything else I have seen. However, she assumes that the aspectual properties found in English, namely "incomplete" and "completed" are universal, and here I disagree with her.

Therefore, the understanding of the principles and definitions is language dependent, and your understanding seen below is related to Hebrew. Let us start with English. I take the participle as the imperfective aspect and the perfect as the perfective one. In my view, the aspects represent semantic meaning, i.e., uncancellable meaning. The uniform interpretation of the participle used as a verb is ongoing action (the end is not reached) and the perfect signals completed actions (the actions are terminated). Examples of participles expressing completed action and perfects expressing ongoing action are rare and almost nonexistent, and as long as such can be explained as special cases, that does not blot out the uniform interpretation.

I define tense as a "grammaticalization of location in time," which means that simple past in English has a uniform interpretation. There are exceptions to this, and these are more numerous than in the case of the aspects, but these exceptions can be explained as special cases as well.

In Hebrew there are no tenses, so a great part of what is semantic meaning in English is lacking. The Hebrew aspects can not be defined as uncompleted and completed. Thus, the semantic meaning of English is lacking in the aspectual realm as well. So, what basically remains of semantic meaning in BH are verbs with an uncancellable Aktionsart, durativity, dynamicity, and telicity, and a few differences between the perfective and imperfective aspect. Everything else represents pragmatics. I have advocated that temporal reference can change but not "tense" in the technical sense of the word. the uses of the BH aspects are very diverse, but there are some properties that do not change.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo






Hi,

as far as I understand Rolf's work he claims that both tense and aspect are cancellable. That was the whole point of his providing
refined definitions of imperfect and perfect aspects.

James Christian







Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page