Illustrating Semantic Range

Semantic Range, Lexicography, and other approaches to word meaning - in general, or for particular words.
Post Reply
Barry Hofstetter
Posts: 2159
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 1:48 pm

Illustrating Semantic Range

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

My favorite example to illustrate semantic range to show how context restricts that range (in normal prose) to one usage:
The captain can run the ship with a run in her stocking while her crew members run a race on the run on deck 10.
A native speaker of English will find such a sentence odd, but neither will he mistake the quite distinctive usage of each occurrence of the word "run." So why do we sometimes attempt in biblical Greek to force a usage of the word that does not fit the context?

1) Unfamiliarity with the language

2) Theological agenda...
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Jonathan Robie
Posts: 4158
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
Contact:

Re: Illustrating Semantic Range

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Suppose I don't speak English, and I encounter this text:
The captain can run the ship with a run in her stocking while her crew members run a race on the run on deck 10.
If I'm struggling with the words, it's easy enough to think "run in her stocking" may refer to a physical activity done while wearing a particular kind of clothing. In other English texts, I find things like "she starts out each day with a run in her pink sweat suit". And "on the run" is a phrase we also find in many texts, with a different meaning. The sense we choose for each word affects the sense of the surrounding words.

As native speakers of English, it's hard to get it wrong, even for such a complex sentence, because we have such well-developed intuition for the language. But it's easy for a non-native speaker to get it wrong.

I think we ask ourselves questions about the sense of a word that a native speaker of Greek would not have asked in the New Testament era. And it's not always driven by an agenda.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Barry Hofstetter
Posts: 2159
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 1:48 pm

Re: Illustrating Semantic Range

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Jonathan, these are good observations, but notice that my first reason was:
Unfamiliarity with the language
So I agree completely. The more familiar we are with a language, the greater the chance we'll get it right. But I think we've all seen agenda driven lexical fallacy, as well... :?

So that means we must develop familiarity, and with ancient Greek that means reading lots of Greek. Have I ever said that before?
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
cwconrad
Posts: 2112
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:52 pm
Location: Burnsville, NC 28714
Contact:

Re: Illustrating Semantic Range

Post by cwconrad »

Yes, it's "unfamiliarity with the language." And I think that's exactly what's involved in the current discussion on the regular B-Greek list about πάντα πιστεύει, "believes all things." Even the NET has "believes all things" for this expression, but it is really what people on the B-Translation list call "Biblish" rather than standard English.Either one understands πάντα πιστεύει at once or doesn't really know Greek very well. I think sometimes we are so familiar with an English version of a Biblical text that we are shocked when we see the original Greek that has been translated literally and suddenly realize that we don't really understand the English -- even if the Greek makes perfectly good sense.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
David McKay
Posts: 6
Joined: May 30th, 2011, 9:54 pm

Re: Illustrating Semantic Range

Post by David McKay »

We were recently informed by Oxford English Dictionary folk that RUN takes the biscuit for most meanings of one word in English: at least as it is reported in the OED. On my smartphone OED app, there are 77 different entries, not counting the entries for use in phrases.
Post Reply

Return to “Word Meanings”