Biblical Hebrew and Cognitive Linguistics (original) (raw)

Lexicography and Cognitive Linguistics: Hebrew Metaphors from a Cognitive Perspective

DavarLogos, 2004

Resumen En 2000 las Sociedades Bíblicas Unidas lanzaron un nuevo proyecto: A Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (de aquí en más SDBH). Este diccionario es, hasta cierto punto, comparable con el Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament de Louw y Nida, si bien su metodología es un tanto diferente. La obra de Louw y Nida está basada en el modelo semántico al que generalmente nos referimos como análisis componencial del lenguaje. Este nuevo diccionario se basa básicamente en perspectivas de la lingüística cognitiva. Como resultado de esto, la metodología subyacente está basada en una distinción entre los campos semánticos léxicos y contextuales. Este trabajo se concentra mayormente en la forma del SDBH de tratar las metáforas. En primer lugar se brindará una descripción de las metáforas y de otras extensiones del significado desde un punto de vista cognitivo. La segunda parte se ocupa de la perspectiva cognitiva en las metáforas del hebreo bíblico. Finalmente, se dan algunos ejemplos de la forma en que el SDBH procura tratar las metáforas.

תחת‬ A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis of the Biblical Hebrew Lexeme

This thesis addresses the problem of polysemy in describing the biblical Hebrew lexeme תחת in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Traditionally treated as mainly a preposition, it is demonstrated in this study that תחת can also be used as a noun, adverb or conjunction. A critical analysis of standard biblical Hebrew lexica reveals that they typically lack a clear lexicographic framework with which polysemous lexemes can be organized. Ideally, this would offer lexical explanations to users of a lexicon rather than supply lists of alleged meanings. Further, it is also made clear that target language glosses can no longer be accepted as "meaning", a practice which has been uncritically accepted for years. In order to move beyond English glosses, cognitive linguistic tools for categorization and lexical semantics are utilized. This thesis contributes a cognitive linguistic analysis of the polysemous lexeme תחת and a semantic network of תחת that can be useful for digital lexicography. The proposed network is complemented by frame semantic diagrams which describe meaning imagically rather than only with a target language gloss. The various senses established are: substantive (underpart), place (spot), substitution (in place of), exchange (in exchange for), vertical spatial (under), approximately under (at the foot of), control (under the hand), causation (because), and implied perspective (x below [the speaker]). These senses are organized in the proposed network showing the semantic relationship between the senses. The semantic network also provides an evolutionarily plausible explanation of how תחת came to symbolize so many distinct polysemies.

A Cognitive Linguistic Methodology for the Study of Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible

Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages, 2005

This article puts forward a procedure for the identification and analysis of conceptual metaphor and metonymy in Classical Hebrew. It is designed to stimulate an appreciation for the figurative nature of Classical Hebrew and serve as a fitting tool to study idealised cognitive models of abstract phenomena, such as religion and emotion. This step-by-step routine should also help the student of Classical Hebrew guard against common errors in the translation and interpretation of the source language while focusing attention on the cultural basis of the metaphoric process.

Lexical meaning in Biblical Hebrew and cognitive semantics: a case study

Biblica, 2006

This paper examines the contribution that a cognitive linguistic model of meaning can make towards the semantic analysis and description of Biblical Hebrew. It commences with a brief description of some of the basic insights provided by cognitive semantics. The notion "semantic ...

Selecting and Analyzing Metaphors in the Hebrew Bible: Cognitive Linguistics and the Literary

In Cognitive Linguistics, it is customary to stress the ubiquity of conceptual metaphors. In literary studies, however, critics tend to highlight the special character of specific metaphors in texts. Exegetes using the tenets of Conceptual Metaphor Theory have thus far been at odds with the ubiquity of conceptual metaphors in literary texts: do all conceptual metaphors (and they are many) deserve equal attention? Do they all equally affect the text and the reader’s experience? In this article, we study what is needed to discuss literary metaphors in Biblical Hebrew texts based on the theorems of cognitive linguistics. We combine Steen’s findings on the deliberate use of metaphor with those of Pilkington on the range and strength of mappings. As such, we introduce criteria to first select and subsequently analyze metaphors in the biblical corpus. We advocate for explicitness and illustrate our point with an example from the book of Job (6:14–21).

Review of Geeraerts, Dirk ed. 2006. Cognitive Linguistics. Basic Readings

Cognitive Linguistics (CL) is not only a scientific approach to the study of language, but undoubtedly one of the most rapidly expanding schools in linguistics nowadays. As a dynamic and attractive framework within theoretical and descriptive linguistics, it proves to be one of the most exciting areas of research within the interdisciplinary project of cognitive science. Part of its seductiveness arises from the fact that CL aims at an integrated model of language and thought, at the building of a sharp theory of linguistic meaning that reflects the human construal of external reality, taking into account the way in which human beings experience reality, both culturally and psychologically (27). In its description of natural language, CL attempts to bridge "the distance between the social and the psychological, between the community and the individual, between the system and the application of the system, between the code and the actual use of the code" (26).

Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics Introduction

Cognitive linguistics began as an approach to the study of language, but it now has implications and applications far beyond language in any traditional sense of the word. It has its origins in the 1980s as a conscious reaction to Chomskyan linguistics, with its emphasis on formalistic syntactic analysis and its underlying assumption that language is independent from other forms of cognition. Increasingly, evidence was beginning to show that language is learned and processed much in the same way as other types of information about the world, and that the same cognitive processes are involved in language as are involved in other forms of thinking. For example, in our everyday lives, we look at things from different angles, we get up close to them or further away and see them from different vantage points and with different levels of granularity; we assess the relative features of our environment and decide which are important and need to be attended to and which are less important and need to be backgrounded; we lump information together, perceive and create patterns in our environment, and look for these patterns in new environments when we encounter them. As we will see in this volume, all of these processes are at work in language too.

Taylor&Littlemore (2014) Cognitive Linguistic approach to language study

a syntactic construction, might also be analysed in terms of a central, prototypical member, and a number of extended, or more peripheral senses. A noteworthy milestone here is the dissertation by one of Lakoff's students, Claudia Brugman, on the polysemy of the preposition over . Brugman argued that the 'central', 'prototypical' sense combines the meanings of 'above' and 'across', as in The bird flew over the yard. Extended senses, related in virtue of some common shared features, include the 'above' sense, as in the helicopter is hovering over the hill, the 'across' sense, as in Sam drove over the bridge, the 'covering' sense, as in She spread the tablecloth over the table, the dispersal sense, as in The guards were posted all over the hill, and several more. Brugman's thesis (presented in Lakoff 1987: Case Study 2) not only inspired a plethora of over-studies, it also provided a template for polysemy studies more generally.