Re: Relevance Theory and the Bible - a Few Resources

Biblical Greek morphology and syntax, aspect, linguistics, discourse analysis, and related topics
Matthew Longhorn
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Re: Relevance Theory and the Bible - a Few Resources

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

I posted this to Nerdy Language Majors facebook group a while back while this site was down. For those of you with an interest on this topic and not part of that group, here is a link to a website I set up to gather as much as I can. This includes review articles, and many resources not related to language


https://biblicalrelevancetheory.com/
Matthew Longhorn
Posts: 756
Joined: November 10th, 2017, 2:48 pm
Contact:

Re: Relevance Theory and the Bible - a Few Resources

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

Given that there are now a number of works out on Greek that apply relevance theory (RT) I figured this newly published book may be useful to people. It isn't a work applying anything to Greek, rather it is an attempt to show that construction grammar and relevance theory are compatible. So if people with a cognitive linguistics / CxG leaning found that the works I have referenced here don't quite scratch their intellectual itch given the pragmatics focus of these books, this may be worth reading.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/li ... BE492849C2
One of the key challenges in linguistics is to account for the link between linguistic knowledge and our use of language in a way that is both descriptively accurate and cognitively plausible. This pioneering book addresses these challenges by combining insights from Construction Grammar and Relevance Theory, two influential approaches which until now have been considered incompatible. After a clear and detailed presentation of both theories, the author demonstrates that their integration is possible, and explains why this integration is necessary, in order to understand exactly how meaning comes about. A new theoretical model is offered that provides ground-breaking insights into the semantics-pragmatic interface, and addresses a variety of topics including the nature of lexical and grammatical concepts, procedural meaning, coercion and idiom processing.
I haven't finished the book yet, although am most of the way through; it has sparked a desire in me to get back into the literature again. Basically the author challenges some assumptions in both theories and shows how slight modifications / shifts in emphasis can make the two theories compatible.

Leclercq argues that the meaning of concepts needs to abandon both atomic and referential commitments; instead the meaning of concepts needs to be focussed on encylopedic knowledge, something that he is seemingly not out on a limb by himself with. This shift to conceptual meaning comprising encylopedic knowledge in RT allows it to be more compatible with CxG notions of networks of activated knowledge.
Leclerq also argues that the term knowledge in CxG needs to be rejected and replaced with "meaning potential" as knowledge implies conscious awareness "Rather, the semantics of a particular lexeme only functions as a meaning potential which is exploited in context to derive the speaker's intended interpretation... Our minds make available complex semantic structures which in different contexts will be exploited in different differently..."
The relevance theoretic comprehension procedure is necessary to account for language change over time. Here the listener has to identify the intention of the speaker and identify which elements of the network of activated meanings are intended by the author. This allows for entrenchment over time the more these meanings are encountered and can lead to conventionalised changes in the meaning of a word in a given context. I can't quite recall if he said this in what I have read, but this would seem to lead to new areas of activated meanings becoming available as that word is used in the new context

He also challenges the idea in CxG that the meaning of a construction usually takes priority over the meaning of a lexeme. Instead he argues that "... the procedural nature of schematic constructions follows from their encoding meta-conceptual information i.e. information about the type of concept which is expected to occur in a given position of a construction"


Anyway, as I said, I still need to finish the book, but hopefully it is of interest to someone who focuses more on one theory over the other.
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