Biblical Hebrew Forum

[John Leake <jesleake AT yahoo.co.uk>]

Indeed, Oun! 'Meaning' is a rather vague (and, at least among us, contested) term. And I can understand Karl's wish to simplify things, to provide a core idea from which contextual significance flows, and can am sympathetic with it as one valid approach among many, even if it's not my approach (students of modern Semitic languages tend to see problems of lexis very differently to those of ancient Semitic languages, in my experience, and are far more suspicious of core/root ideas. I know I saw lexis differently when a much younger student of Biblical Hebrew a quarter of a century ago to how I see it now as an Arabist). 

Of course semantics are a well-trodden territory for those of us who have formally explored linguistic science; for those of us who haven't (by far the majority) these are questions we are seeing relatively fresh. So I hope the linguistically educated will have patience with those of us who are not. Indeed that these are also philosophical issues is equally apparent, as anyone familiar with ancient (or twentieth century) philosophy will surely agree.

John Leake

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ان صاحب حياة هانئة لا يدونها انما يحياها

He who has a comfortable life doesn't write about it - he lives it

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On 7 May 2013, at 23:31, Oun Kwon <kwonbbl AT gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 7:00 PM, John Leake <jesleake AT yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Karl, why do you keep repeating that multiple meanings to a word are

uncommon. It doesn't become truer in the repetition. In fact, common verbs

(nouns are more likely to have stable meanings) regularly exhibit polysemy,

multiple meanings, in modern languages. In fact it's hard to think of common

verbs that don't. Look at your monoglot English dictionary. How many common

verbs have a single entry, a single lexical meaning in terms of their own

language? Few. Now, if you were to say 'in a given context words generally

have a single meaning' I might well agree with you. Words with contradictory

meanings - the Biblical 'let', for example, or a word I used a lot when

young, 'billion' (which could mean either 'million million' or 'milliard'),

soon settle for one meaning or other in a given context (so 'without let or

hinder' is as unambiguous as 'I let you eat'  or, indeed, 'to let blood').

Similarly 'billion' now almost exclusively means 'milliard' and the latter

word is forgotten. Incidentally the same goes for etymologically different

words that coincide through phonological change (words like 'let', indeed).

Now, there is still ambiguity even in context - in far more than 0.1% of

the lexis - and we depend on it somewhat for irony, but once you take

context into account your statement is much closer to the truth than the

converse. <clipped>

John Leake

Hi John,

One of the problem I face is about the meaning of 'meaning'. When
there are multitudes listed under a word in a lexicon/dictionary, are
they all what we call 'meaning'? Lot's of them I see as not 'meaning'
as such, but a certain usage. Someone argued one time on a different
list that 'evening' (also) means 'afternoon' or 'late afternoon', I
don't recall clearly. Lo, there is a such in any decent English
dictionary. But, looking carefully, it is a Southern dialect. It's
usage; hardly a meaning of a word.

Oun Kwon