two models?
Michael Burer
burer at bible.org
Fri Oct 25 09:26:24 EDT 2002
Two more questions, and then I'll be done with this thread:
(1) Would you explain briefly what systemic functionalism is and how it
works as a unifying framework? I am not familiar with that model of
linguistics.
(2) From what you wrote I understand you to see no connection between
form and meaning, and I would take form basically to mean words and
phrases. In other words, you only see meaning when you put strings of
words and phrases together into a discourse. Am I correct in that
understanding? If so, that impresses me as throwing the baby out with
the bathwater. The cases have to mean something, the parts of
conditional sentences have to mean something (or else partial conditions
which occur in the NT would be undecipherable), etc. I don't deny that
there is meaning in the book of Romans as a whole, for example, but it
does matter how THEOU as a genitive relates to DIKAIOSUNH in 1:17 and
elsewhere. (This last sentence is meant simply as an example to bolster
my argument, not as an invitation to discuss that meaning.)
Michael Burer
Clay wrote:
-----Original Message-----
First of all forget Discourse Analysis, that isn't the issue. DA is not
a unifying conceptual framework, it is just a tool for analyzing
discourse structure. It doesn't replace or supersede anything. Systemic
Functionalism is an example of a unifying conceptual framework.
<snip>
First and foremost, 1,000s of hybrid categories which link together form
and meaning, e.g., "constative (complexive, puntiliar, comprehensive,
global) aorist." After using this textbook, a student will come away
thinking these categories actually represent something real in the
language itself. This misunderstanding is likely to haunt them for the
duration of their studies in NT Greek.
It is my contention that use of GGBB as a text book leads to a
fundamental misunderstanding of the connection between form and meaning.
The proof of this is the students who have studied the book. The
students who come out of the Mounce/Wallace school will always ask the
same kind of questions. Their questions reveal an assumption that
meaning can be derived from form in some sort of predictable manner
working from the bottom up. This is not possible.
Meaning is only found at the higher constituent levels (discourse,
paragraph, clause). Any attempt to write a finite set of formal rules to
determine meaning starting from the bottom will fail.
For this reason I consider the myriad of hybrid categories found in GGBB
a good reason to avoid using it as a textbook. I suspect Wallace has a
correct understanding of these issues, but the impact of this book is
the issue. Not what he understands.
The solution to this problem is NOT to use less categories. A hybrid
category which links morph-syntax with semantics is a bad idea. It leads
to a misunderstanding of a very difficult and interesting problem: The
relationship between form and meaning.
<snip>
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