Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ruth Mathys <ruth_mathys AT sil.org>]

I've seen it claimed here repeatedly that a single lexeme necessarily has a
single meaning in all the contexts it is used in.  I think that is nonsense.
I won't attempt to prove it from Hebrew, but it is easy to demonstrate from
English.

Take the word 'draw'.  A horse can draw a cart, or I can draw the curtains
-- that means that some agent is pulling an object.  For 'draw', I can
substitute words like 'pull', 'tug', 'tow', etc.  On the other hand, I can
draw a picture -- in this case the agent is creating a product.  For 'draw',
I can substitute words like 'create', 'paint', 'sketch', etc.  There is
absolutely no overlap in meaning.  And yet I think most English speakers
would say that it is the same word in both contexts, perhaps linked by a
now-lost stage of meaning where the implement is pulled across the page to
create the image.  But the shift in the nature of the verb's object proves
that the two meanings are distinct.

Another word that has been suggested for multiple meanings is 'strike'.  I
can strike a ball, verb + object.  Or I can strike for better work
conditions, intransitive verb with a goal.  My native-speaker intuition says
that it is the same word both times, but I can't see what the connection is
between the two meanings.  I can't see any residual notion of 'hit' in the
'refuse to work' meaning.  And again, the two meanings have different
syntactic contexts.

Third example: 'class'.  Wool can be sorted into different classes.
Students can be sorted into different classes.  In this case, the substitute
words would be 'grade', 'category', 'level', etc.  If I say I'm late for
class, that is obviously a development from the previous meaning, but the
substitute words are different -- 'school', 'seminar', 'session'.  And if I
say that somebody's action shows class, it's a different area of meaning
again -- 'high quality', 'impressiveness'.  Just because the meanings can be
shown to derive historically from each other doesn't make them the same.
The syntactic context is really important too.

Back to lurking.

Ruth Mathys