Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

George:

On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 1:53 AM, George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>wrote:

> Karl,
>
> Can I suggest you actually pay some attention to the standard practice of
> examining semantics: a word may have a wide semantic domain,


I am cognizant of this variance of semantic domains: for example, in
English, “to put” has a very wide semantic domain (“He put the object
there.”) while “to position” a much narrower one, in this case a subset of
“to put” (“He carefully positioned it to the proper orientation.”).

But one doesn’t get “to put” to mean entirely different ideas, e.g. “He put
the batter of the pancakes.” to mean that he mixed the batter. Yet it is
that type of strange connections I find in dictionaries according to
semantic domain. “To put” can be a synonym for pouring the batter into the
pan, but not for mixing it (unless you can find a dialectal or archaic use
of which I am ignorant).

But when I look at many dictionaries specifically of Biblical Hebrew, I
find these often unrelated meanings jumbled together under a word, and I’m
not talking about homographs.

There are plenty of homographs in Biblical Hebrew, and my method, with its
emphasis on context, helps separate them out.


> but in a particular context, usually only one specific meaning within the
> entire domain is on view, or sometimes two if a pun/wordplay is being made.
> Your lexicographical method is to take the entire semantic domain, derive
> an average meaning, and then apply that average meaning across the board.


Not true. If there is one occurrence of a word that doesn’t fit, that
causes a re-evaluation of all the other occurrences of that word. This is
not an average, but there must be unanimity.

However, not all occurrences of a word will have contexts that give clues
as to the meaning of that word. Even so, those occurrences will be checked
in a re-evaluation of a word’s meaning.


>  This is such a brutal and flawed approach to lexicography because it
> ignores the basic framework of language: context. In fact, I think you've
> invented a new fallacy: etymological average transfer.
>
> If you are so confident in your method, may I suggest you write a paper
> outlining it and send it to be peer reviewed by leading lexicographers and
> perhaps included in a journal. You may also get some good feedback from
> them for your consideration.
>
> Do you have any journals in mind that would be interested in this subject?
Could you name them please?

>
> GEORGE ATHAS
> Dean of Research,
> Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)
> Sydney, Australia
>
> Karl W. Randolph.