From: Wayne Leman (wleman@mcn.net)
Date: Wed Jan 17 2001 - 21:44:31 EST
David asked:
> Is the point possibly that each word may not have a unique meaning, but
may
> have a special meaning in context?
From a functional point of view, each word of every language would need to
have a unique meaning. If it did not, and if it were an exact synonym with
some other word, it or the other word would likely drop out of the lexicon,
or else take on some different shade of meaning. But the meaning that each
word is not so easy to pin down as lexicographers sometimes might seem to
indicate in their books (altho I suspect most good lexicographers don't
intend to convey this message). I think that that is part of the meaning
that Barr and others have tried to make, what they call the etymological
fallacy, the gloss fallacy, etc. BAGD does a good job as far as it goes, but
it is not arranged according to semantic domains, like a thesaurus or, for
Greek, like Louw & Nida's volume, which is closer to the way our brains
organize lexical material (semantic associations, groupings, etc.). Each of
these reference tools serves a very useful function. I want each in my
library. BAGD is bibliographically thorough. L&N are semantically more
useful, but not as bibliographically thorough. Kittel is came under the
critical eye of Barr, and rightly so. Yet, for its deficiencies, Kittel is
still a very valuable resource.
Words often do not succumb to being defined with a simple gloss, which is
the point many lexicographical scholars are making these days. Words do not
have points of meaning, but, rather, something more like *areas* of meaning,
more like enclosed circles of meaning, instead of single points, to use some
metaphors that might be helpful. And these circles sometimes intersect in
come contexts. We've seen that with FILEO and AGAPAW. In some contexts these
words are essentially synonymous, in other contexts they contrast, and for
some authors the circles of meaning for each word will probably be a little
different from other authors. Languages are squishy, changeable, adaptable,
wonderfully resourceful, just like the people who use them. In fact, some
people feel that the language capacity is one of the primary definitions of
what it means to be human (I don't want to get into the argument about
whether non-humans have languages; I'm not addressing that issue here and it
is far off-topic for this list). Reality, like languages, is often rather
squishy. But we can live with that, as long as we are willing to live with
circles and boxes and spheres and words that don't all fit neatly into the
compartments that we might want them to and which would make life much
simpler. Words, of course, change in meaning over time. We can be most
grateful that we not only have scholars on this list who are competent in
Koine (Hellenistic) Greek, but also earlier and later stages of Greek, and
contemporary dialect.
And, yes, of course, words have different meanings in different contexts.
But they are not total chameleons. There are boundaries to the word circles,
but within the circles those little word "amoebas" do enjoy scooting around
and acting differently at different times when spoken by different people.
Well, I've gotten "wordy", David, but I hope this helps some. There *is*
truth about the meanings of words. We just can't always pin it down as
nicely as we might like.
Wayne
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Wayne Leman
Bible translation site: http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/
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