Prototype theory (was: Decker on Olsen)
Rodney J. Decker
rdecker at bbc.edu
Mon Mar 5 14:43:25 EST 2001
That's about as clear as mud--at least for non-linguists. And most of us
are not subscribed to b-hebrew. Would you mind explaining it to those of us
who are just ordinary exegetes? I would sincerely like to understand the
theoretical problems that a few see with my proposal, but since I don't
have a PhD in linguistics, I'm not even able to propose an intelligible
defense.
At 08:26 PM 3/5/01 +0200, Kimmo Huovila wrote:
> > Could someone briefly describe this "prototype approach"?
>
>For a brief description, check Peter Kirk's message on b-hebrew Dec 13,
>1999 titled Prototype Theory and Hebrew Tense/Aspect.
>
>The basic idea is that linguistic categorization does not follow
>necessary and sufficient conditions but a comparison to a prototype (a
>typical exemplar of the category). A category may consist of several
>prototypes (if the category is polysemous). These prototypes generally
>are related. What they have in common is called a schema (it can be
>viewed as another prototype of a different level of abstraction).
>Category membership is not clear-cut, but there are clear examples of
>inclusion and exclusion and some gray area in between.
****************************************************
Rodney J. Decker, Th.D. Baptist Bible Seminary
Assoc. Prof./NT PO Box 800, Clarks Summit, PA 18411
rdecker at bbc.edu http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/
XNS Universal Address: =RodDecker
The *Resources for NT Study* site is accessible at:
http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/rd_rsrc.htm
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