Stephen Carlson wrote: ↑August 28th, 2020, 4:32 am
Matthew Longhorn wrote: ↑August 27th, 2020, 12:45 pm
2. Procedural / conceptual distinction.
Procedural meaning is intended to guide the reader to process the data in some way to help achieve optimal relevance. Rather than having a translational value that carries across languages, the lexeme primarily helps to constrain the cognitive processing into certain direction. γαρ and δε can be seen in this light. on the one hand γαρ supports the material it is related to by providing strengthening assumptions. δε indicates development in the discourse. Rather than focusing on lots of different meanings of these words, RT would argue that it is the constraint on our processing that should be seen as the key.
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There is also a claim in the literature that the procedural meanings are relatively rigid, which leads to monosemy analyses, and the attendent issues with that.
I think that rigidity of procedural meaning is a reasonable assumption, so long as it doesn't become over dogmatic. It would seem to follow that if something isn't subject to processes like lexical broadening and narrowing and the creation of ad-hoc concepts then stability would follow. It also seems reasonable given that people want to communicate properly, and these procedural meanings are meant to facilitate that.
That said... I think it would be more reasonable to see them as being subject to much slower change than words with conceptual meanings. People adapt language all the time so I can't believe that processes similar to those leading to semantic bleaching wouldn't apply, although i recognise that I am only extremely vaguely familiar with this area.
I am reading a chapter by Benjamin L. Lappenga on monosemic bias from an RT perspective
https://brill.com/view/book/97890043024 ... &result=12
A while back I majorly gaffed stating that monosemy was a common default for RT. Work similar to Lappenga's was where I was taking that from. Someone at the time joked that perhaps monosemy is polysemic.
Lappenga states (page 8-9)
I argue that a pragmatic approach based on Paul Grice’s maxim that “senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity” offers a solution that is more promising than approaches to word studies based solely on semantic considerations. In other words, to correct the problems brought about by the proliferation of senses and to encourage thorough exegesis of the
discourse in which a word is found,11 NT scholars should exhaust the possibility of monosemy for a given word (or word group) before resorting to lexical polysemy
He continues
To use the example provided above, syntactical and literary considerations suggest that the translation “love is not jealous” is appropriate in 1 Cor 13:4 (ἡ ἀγάπη οὐ ζηλοῖ) and that the translation “be zealous” is appropriate in 12:31
and 14:1. The question that will be pursued in this chapter, however, is whether this is because ζηλόω has distinct lexical senses that can be identified by the immediate syntactical context (disambiguation based on the assumption
of polysemy), or whether Paul’s ‘reader’ (as defined below) constructs these meanings in the moment using a single ‘grab-bag’ of mental items (memories, mental images, pieces of encyclopedic and/or anecdotal information, etc.)
associated with ζηλόω (ad hoc enrichment of a univocal lexical meaning). The latter, I will argue, takes more seriously the mental processes involved in the communicative event and helps explain the strategic repetition of words
(‘staging’)13 and subsequent identity-making that Paul pursues in several of his letters.14
If he is correct that we have a congitive bias towards monosemy in words denoting concepts then that could help to strengthen the view of a relatively strong rigidity in procedural meanings. I have his book on the way and need to finish this chapter anyway, so may be clearer on that myself by the end
Stephen Carlson wrote: ↑August 28th, 2020, 4:32 am
I like the notion of procedural meaning. For the (definite) article, I would say its procedural meaning is an instruction to identify the referent. The challenges I face are: how to identify procedural meaning, how to evaluate competing claims of procedures, and how to identify elements of English that have comparable procedural meanings to the Greek grams.
I think the question of how to identify the correct procedural meaning is an important one and it is one that I struggle over. It seems that the only answer is contextual readings, hypothesis formation, re-application to the texts to see if it accounts for all or at least the vast majority of the evidence. It can make fairly tedious reading though, going through each example and then explaining how the same procedure applies. I just don't think that that is something people like me with a passing interest and a still growing competency in reading Greek can do.
I also get worried with RT that sometimes it finds what it wants to find. It then makes the question - is that because the theory is genuinely powerful and can account for human communication well, or is it because of another less sound reason. To some extent I would expect a good theory of communication to apply across the board pretty well, and to make some pretty self-evident statements. It is just a concern I have