Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Lexemes and meanings

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Ruth Mathys <ruth_mathys AT sil.org>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Lexemes and meanings
  • Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 10:21:00 +1000

Karl asked:

> However, in what way is my usage idiosyncratic?

Please let me quote some sentences that I read just last night (in Croft and
Cruse, _Cognitive Linguistics_, 2004, p. 258):

>> The term 'meaning' is intended to represent all of the conventionalized
>> aspects of a construction's function... We will use the terms 'meaning' and
>> 'semantic' to refer to any conventionalized function of a construction.

Notice how the authors expressly link meaning to *function*. A construction
is the form, and the meaning is the function of that form.

Think about a table. The *form* of a table is one or more legs with a flat
surface on top. The *function* of a table is to be a convenient place to
put things on. Or a train: the form of a train is an engine linking
carriages. The function of a train is to move people and goods from one
place to another. These are a couple of examples of form and function.

In language, the form could be a string of sounds, a string of hand/body
movements, a string of marks on paper... At a different level, the form is
a word, a sentence, a grammatical construction... But the *function* of
language is always to communicate, to mean. This thread should be
discussing how a form -- a lexeme and its context -- performs a function --
to create meaning. To put any aspect of meaning onto the 'form' side of the
form-function equation is so idiosyncratic as to baffle intelligent
discussion.

I came upon a good example of a lexeme which I hope we can discuss in a way
that we all benefit from. Not an obscure example ;-) but I'm still a
relative beginner so it caught me by surprise. Normally with עשה I expect
the direct object to be a product, either concrete (e.g. a house) or
metaphorical (e.g. a deed). So I was a bit surprised to read a sentence
where the direct object was a person. In this case it wasn't God creating
somebody ex nihilo; there was ל plus a second noun to say what God was
turning the person into. So the unusual object, plus the change of syntax
in the sentence (the addition of a prepositional phrase), alerted me to a
change in meaning for the verb. It doesn't have its usual meaning of
creating something out of nothing; instead, it means to change the status of
something that already exists. Looking in my dictionary, I see that there
is an interesting subset of this meaning. If the agent is a human being
(not God) and the object is an animal, and the context is talking about
sacrifice, then the meaning is to offer the animal as a sacrifice. Again,
there is a shift from creating something to changing the status of
something. Apparently there is sometimes a prepositional phrase to
explicate the meaning of 'use as a sacrifice', but not always. It seems to
be a technical term in sacrifice contexts.

Karl, I notice that you didn't interact at all with my English examples of
words that change meaning depending on their syntactic context ("She has
class" / "She has a class now"). I hope you will be willing to discuss this
Hebrew example. How do you account for the different syntactic usages of
עשה in your dictionary?

Ruth Mathys






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page