Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Nir:

On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 2:48 AM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br> wrote:

karl,

i recommend you to read wittgenstein.

It’s been a long time since I last read western philosophy. I view it as garbage-in, massaged by a faulty algorithm, then garbage-out. It’s a dead end.

 

he once dedicated a whole book (quite
meager, though, and i was using the bilingual edition...) to the meaning of
just one word: a chair. a word is not just a concept: a word is also a class
object, and people organize classes in different ways. for example, if you
define a chair as functional (a place to sit on), visual (four legs etc) or
status (to occupy a chair in acommittee) you get three distinct classes with
some intersection. see 2Kgs 15:12 where KS) is none of the above.

That’s a problem with thinking formally, in that many different forms can do for a function. From your description of the book, while Wittgenstein acknowledged that there is a function to a chair, he subsumed it within a formal concept so that he apparently didn’t see the whole advantage of functional analysis.

also, KS) is different than KS and MW$B? are they mere synonyms? all these
question need finer answers than just "chair".

KS is a happax legomenon, in an apparently corrupted section of text. Is there a DSS example of this text? This is found in Exodus 17:16.

MW$B is a place to settle down. It’s used for settlement, as in a group of houses. Also used for where an individual can settle his body down, as in a couch or seat. It’s from a root meaning “to settle down”.

KS) apparently refers to a place of honor, where honor is as important as the idea of being a place to sit.

Come to think of it, I don’t remember a term in Biblical Hebrew that is equivalent to the modern word for “chair”.

also, take Isa 31:8-9 and try to translate NPL, XRB, T)KLNW, SL(, PNY, )WR,
MS, TNWR. none of them is what your one-word dictionary would say they are. 

I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have no problem reading that passage according to the definitions I wrote in my dictionary.

things get worse when you try to encapsulate not just a word, lexeme etc, but
a whole root into a single word which will stand for all the words derived
from it.

This sentence makes no sense. Are you talking about translation? By now you should know me well enough that you know I reject the etymological fallacy. Did your mind run ahead of your fingers, so that you wrote something that you didn’t intend, as I sometimes do? 

nir cohen

Karl W. Randolph.