Biblical words are nolonger referential?

Semantic Range, Lexicography, and other approaches to word meaning - in general, or for particular words.
Daniel Semler
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Re: Biblical words are nolonger referential?

Post by Daniel Semler »

Cool - I'll be interested in his response

Thx
D
William Ross
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Re: Biblical words are nolonger referential?

Post by William Ross »

I responded earlier this morning (see p. 1) but it got stuck in moderation. Thanks.
​William A. Ross
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τοῦ κυρίου ἡ σωτηρία (Ps. 3:8)
RandallButh
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Re: Biblical words are nolonger referential?

Post by RandallButh »

Another useful book to follow Ross' thought might be

Ewa Walaszewska "Relevance-Theoretic Lexical Pragmatics" CUP 2015. 232pp. I'm currently reading it.
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Biblical words are nolonger referential?

Post by Jonathan Robie »

William Ross wrote: October 13th, 2021, 8:52 am Hey there. Thanks to James Spinti for alerting me to this thread. I don't often haunt these hallowed halls, but I'll make a brief comment here. Honestly I'm not sure why this claim would be very breathtaking although apparently it does seem to have been misunderstood. The only point I am trying to make in this ~30-second comment is that meaning is conceptual (a core theoretical commitment of cognitive linguistics) and therefore, for words to have meaning they do not necessarily have to be referential. There is a good discussion of this idea in Kroeger (2019) 15-22 if you're interested. You can get the book open access (https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/231).
William, should I assume you were trying to say the same thing as the above book says on page 22?
If meaning was just denotation, then phrases like those in (12), which have no referent in our world at the present time, would all either mean the same thing, or be meaningless. But clearly they are not meaningless, and they do not all mean the same thing; they simply fail to refer.

(12) a. the present King of France
b. the largest prime number
c. the diamond as big as the Ritz
d. the unicorn in the garden

Frege’s distinction allows us to see that non-referring expressions like those in (12) may not have a referent, but they do have a sense, and that sense is derived in a predictable way by the normal rules of the language.
Of course, with the texts we are interested in, the referent may have been clear to both the speaker/writer and the original audience, but not to us. Scholars may debate what the referent is. Even if we know logically what the referent is, we may not have the same direct experience with it, e.g. few of us have ever actually reclined at table, fewer have ever had that experience as a regular part of life.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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William Ross
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Re: Biblical words are nolonger referential?

Post by William Ross »

Yes exactly. Again this doesn't strike me as breathtaking!
​William A. Ross
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τοῦ κυρίου ἡ σωτηρία (Ps. 3:8)
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Biblical words are nolonger referential?

Post by Jonathan Robie »

RandallButh wrote: October 13th, 2021, 12:32 pm Another useful book to follow Ross' thought might be

Ewa Walaszewska "Relevance-Theoretic Lexical Pragmatics" CUP 2015. 232pp. I'm currently reading it.
Can you expand on this? I don't have the book.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Eeli Kaikkonen
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Re: Biblical words are nolonger referential?

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

So I was certainly wrong. Not breathtaking news, either. :)
Stirling Bartholomew
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Re: Biblical words are nolonger referential?

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

Been reading monographs on cognitive approaches to lexical semantics for two decades. Introduced to the field by Reinier de Blois The Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew. Never had any problem understanding referentiality.
The frame approach to writing definitions (frame write-up in this study) enables the translator to access the referential event, cognitive understanding, non-verbal communication and symbolic gesture associated with a word or expression in a specific situation (§4.13). Hypothetically, the translator can then decide on which word or expression in the receptor language evokes a similar referential event in the receptor culture with a similar determinant meaning for the profiled word or expression. Where there is a mismatch or absence of similar concepts, the translator can then resort to Bible translation principles to bridge the gap; the translator has the relevant information needed in order to find a way to provide similar information in the receptor language.

Some Lexemes Associated with the Concept of JOY in Biblical Hebrew: A Cognitive Linguistic Investigation
April 2014 Michael L. Megahan/quote]
C. Stirling Bartholomew
Stirling Bartholomew
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Re: Biblical words are nolonger referential?

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

I think the misunderstanding has something to do with age. Those of us who are old enough to be familiar with mid-20th century atheism hear the statement:
Biblical words are nolonger referential
and immediately think it equates with "Biblical stories are fairy tales."

Never the less, the statement is going to create problems since some biblical words are definitely referential. Just because the referent isn't perfectly clear doesn't make the word non-referential as in Utopia.
C. Stirling Bartholomew
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Biblical words are nolonger referential?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

William Ross wrote: October 13th, 2021, 8:52 am Hey there. Thanks to James Spinti for alerting me to this thread. I don't often haunt these hallowed halls, but I'll make a brief comment here. Honestly I'm not sure why this claim would be very breathtaking although apparently it does seem to have been misunderstood. The only point I am trying to make in this ~30-second comment is that meaning is conceptual (a core theoretical commitment of cognitive linguistics) and therefore, for words to have meaning they do not necessarily have to be referential. There is a good discussion of this idea in Kroeger (2019) 15-22 if you're interested. You can get the book open access (https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/231).
Thanks for chiming in. That’s sort of helpful and stuff I already knew, but I have to admit I’m still confused by what you meant when you said that “Biblical languages are no longer referential.” If they once were referential, what made them change? Philosophers might have a problem with the that fact that the tree Jesus was referring to no longer exists today, but that does not really seem to the sort of problem that creates difficulties for the student.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
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