Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

Hi David,

Quoting David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>:

> Hi Karl,
>
>
> > David:
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 3:57 PM, David Kummerow<farmerjoeblo at
> > hotmail.com> wrote:
> >  > Hi Karl,
> >  >
> >  >> [snip]
> >  >>
> >  >> If you had been listening, you would have heard that your dialectal
> >  >> use is valid but only for within your dialect.
> >  >
> >  > So semantics as uncancellable meaning is invalid as a principal within a
> >  > dialect, but not so within a "standard language"?
> >
> > Is this a question showing great ignorance of linguistic principles,
> > or one that is snide and sneering?
>
> No, it's definitely one that I do not hold to and I would strongly
> contend against. But it's what you seem to mean when you said: "If you
> had been listening, you would have heard that your dialectal use is
> valid but only for within your dialect." That is, the the cancellable
> semantics of "plod" is only valid within my dialect, and so as such
> semantics as uncancellable meaning is only appropriate as an area of
> study and as a principle within a dialect.

This is clearly not what Karl is saying at all. The more you go down  
this line the greater a distance you are putting between him and  
yourself.

Rolf made his statements regarding 'plod' based on one particular  
variant of the English language. Personally, I see that whether that  
variant is the 'standard' one or not as completely irrelevant. You  
have criticised Rolf's example of the uncancellable meaning of plod  
based on usage in another variant of the English language. Karl points  
out that the difference between a dialect and a cognate language is  
one of degree not of kind. The intimation here is that your argument  
is invalid because you are using a different language than the one  
used in Rolf's argument. In this I agree. If you wish to offer a valid  
critique of Rolf's analysis of 'plod' then you clearly need to be  
using the same snapshot of the same language. All you have proved to  
me is that the uncancellable meaning of 'plod' is different in the  
language you are analysing to that of 'plod' in the language that  
everyone else is analysing. i.e. you see it to refer to heavy steps  
rather than slow steps. You then claim that you do not see your  
definition as uncancellable but do not offer any examples from your  
dialect that prove your definition to be cancellable. This is bad  
academic practice on every conceivable level.

James Christian

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