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
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