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

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • To: Ruth Mathys <ruth_mathys AT sil.org>
  • Cc: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Lexemes and meanings
  • Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 09:01:50 -0700

Ruth:


On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Ruth Mathys <ruth_mathys AT sil.org> wrote:
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.

I’d always considered “function” to be a synonym for “action”, but if I read this rightly, I was mistaken. So if I were to redefine my understanding of “swing” in the context of a conductor in front of the orchestra, “function” is the leading of the orchestra, while “action” is the limited circular motion of the baton. Does this make sense to you? Does this fit linguistic theory?

If I read you rightly, that means that sometimes “function” and “action” are the same, sometimes widely different. So that when I look at definitions of words, I don’t look at “function”, rather at “action” either direct or metaphoric.  

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.

This is an example where function and action are very similar, if not the same.
 
 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.

And this is an example of where function and action differ, if I understand you correctly. 

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.

This is one of the more common words used in Biblica Hebrew. It is used in a wider range of contexts than any equivalent word in English. I understand it to mean more like the German word “machen” than the English “make”, but even there not exactly the same.

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").

In this example, the two are etymologically related, known because we have a written record of the uses of the terms over history. (A person who has achieved a sufficient class of learning may teach a class. Such a person is usually from a higher class and should deport himself to show that he has class.) But in Hebrew we don’t have that record, so in my dictionary, I list similar examples separately (there are very few such examples in Biblical Hebrew).
 
 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?

Okay, you hit an example of what I call one of the weaknesses of my dictionary—it started out as abbreviated notes in the margins of other dictionaries, and while I am in the process of upgrading the definitions to a description of what the words mean and the contexts to which they refer, I have not yet done that with this word. But when reading the text, I understand עשה more along the lines of the German “machen” than to any single English term.

Ruth Mathys

Karl W. Randolph.



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