Dear list-members,
As I already have mentioned, David Kummerow have several times
misrepresented my dissertation. Because of what he has written, the
concept "uncanceallable meaning" has got an enormous focus, and it
has appeared that my dissertation is centered around this concept and
that the conclusions stands and falls with this concept.
As a matter of fact, the concept itself plays a very little role in
my work. What plays a very important role, however, is the
distinction between semantics and pragmatics, for example between
past tense and past reference. And I ascribe much more to pragmatics
than most grammars and textbooks do. For example, those who say that
WAYYIQTOL represents past tense has given the form a semantic
meaning, while I argue that the past reference of the many WAYYIQTOLs
are pragmatic. So I go in the opposite direction of what is suggested
by David's focus on uncancellable meaning.
But of course, in order to distinguish between semantics and
pragmatics, one must know the contents of both concepts. So I will
strongly state that uncancellable meaning do exist. I would like to
make a final test regarding this. I claim that the Hebrew verb $YR
(sing) has the properties dynamicity (change) and durativity (the
action continues for some time). I further claim that these
properties are uncancellable, i.e., there is no context where the
verb $YR will cease to be durative and dynamic. So I challenge those
who deny that uncancellable meaning exists to show that my claim is
wrong. If they cannot do that, they should admit that uncancellable
meaning do exist.
Best regards,
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
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