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MONOSEMY IN BIBLICAL STUDIES:
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF RECENT WORK
Ryder A. Wishart
McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, ON, Canada
Abstract: This review article critically engages two recent
monographs that utilize Charles Ruhl’s theory of monosemy to
analyze the New Testament. After outlining Ruhl’s theory, I discuss
how Gregory Fewster attempts to model monosemy within the
linguistic framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, and how
Benjamin Lappenga does so within the framework of Relevance
Theory. Each makes important contributions, but I argue that neither
has significantly improved on Ruhl’s original model and that some of
the modifications of Ruhl’s theory end up being unhelpful or unclear.
Nevertheless, both authors have persuasively exhibited the usefulness
of a monosemic approach to studying biblical words and texts.
(Review Article)
Keywords: Monosemy, Gregory P. Fewster, Benjamin J. Lappenga,
Charles Ruhl, Lexical Semantics.
1. Introduction
Even though the dominant trend in the lexical and grammatical
traditions within biblical studies has been towards polysemy,
there are dissenting voices in biblical studies.1Stanley Porter,
Gregory Fewster, and Benjamin Lappenga argue that observed
variation is not inherent in the semantics of words themselves
but rather a function of the context within which words occur. In
other words, they agree that variation arises from contextual
modulation, and that words themselves have a much more
1. For discussion and references, see Porter, Linguistic Analysis, 51–53.
[BAGL 6 (2017) 99–126]
unified core of semantic information. In this sense, these three
proponents of monosemy describe their position as a
“monosemic bias.”2In this paper, I will first introduce Ruhlian
monosemy, and then assess and critique both Fewster and
Lappenga’s monograph-length studies incorporating monosemy,
concluding that their work indicates some intriguing possibilities
for future development, despite drawbacks apparent in their
appropriation of Ruhl.
2. Words, Polysemy, and Monosemy in Biblical Studies
Words have always been a topic of much discussion for biblical
scholars. On the one hand, lexical semantics has proven to be a
fruitful area of research when engaged within biblical studies.
For example, words can be analyzed in order to refine our
assumptions regarding the meaning of biblical texts. On the other
hand, lexical semantics has also proven to be a false foundation
for many studies. Words can be invested with too much meaning,
causing the proliferation of baseless claims that often take the
form of posturing about the “true” meaning of certain words.3
One of the assumptions that has arguably contributed to this
convoluted state of affairs is the semantic role of polysemy. If by
polysemy one simply means to refer to the variation in meaning
that can be observed in actual utterances, there are few who
would disagree with the claim that polysemy is “the natural
condition of words.”4However, if by polysemy one means to
refer to a feature inherent in the words themselves—evident in
any dictionary that lists multiple distinct senses for a lexeme—
then there are, as mentioned, dissenting voices.5The basis of the
monosemic approach is the work of Charles Ruhl. On his view,
words do not have multiple distinct senses—utterances do.
Instead, a word can be understood as a monosemous signifier,
2. Porter, Linguistic Analysis, 53; Fewster, Creation Language, 36;
Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 27, 29.
3. Barr, Semantics, 107–60.
4. Geeraerts, Theories of Lexical Semantics, 42.
5. See note 1.
100 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
contributing a single, monosemous semantic meaning to each
and every utterance in which it occurs. Instances of words that
appear to have incommensurably different meanings, then, are
better understood as figurative extensions or homonyms (i.e. two
words each with single meanings), rather than as one word with
multiple meanings.
At bottom, this disagreement is amatter of orientation toward
the data. Scholars who value systematicity and tight semantic
descriptions will likely gravitate toward a monosemous
perspective, whereas those who value the diversity and
dynamism of polysemy are probably not going to find Ruhl
convincing. Monosemy is a minimalist orientation;6polysemy is
a maximalist one.7While neither side would claim
thoroughgoing polysemy or monosemy within a lexicon—that is,
some words will have one meaning and some words will have
more or will be considered homonyms, regardless of the
position—each side can be understood as a disposition that tends
in either one direction or the other.
A reengagement of Ruhl’s original monograph, I argue, is
important for future incorporation of monosemy into biblical
studies, and to this end I will offer an overview of Ruhlian
monosemy and an example of its application before my critical
analysis of Fewster and Lappenga’s recent monographs.
3. Ruhlian Monosemy
Charles Ruhl’s work on lexical monosemy comprises the first
attempt to theorize a programmatic explanation of lexical
monosemy.8According to Ruhl’s theory of monosemy, the
6. Ruhl, Monosemy, ix.
7. Geeraerts, Theories of Lexical Semantics, 182.
8. See the following two key works for a representative account of his
work: Ruhl, On Monosemy; Ruhl, “Data, Comprehensiveness, Monosemy.”
The minimalist priority represented by monosemy has an unclear origin. While
Ruhl was the first to publish a significant monograph with the word monosemy
in the title, he was not the first to approach linguistic analysis as a minimalist.
Two others are worth mentioning here. First, Willia m Diver’s approach—
Columbia School linguistics—attempts to discover a consistent or invariant
WISHART Monosemy in Biblical Studies 101
lexicogrammatical meaning, or meaning potential of a sign, is a
generalization of its meaning in all its contexts. I take “meaning
in context” to be a sign’s apparent contribution to the contextual
messages to which it contributes. If one generalizes what is
common to all contextual messages that include a sign, so Ruhl
articulates, one has identified the lexicogrammatical meaning of
the sign, because the sign is the common denominator between
all of its uses in a corpus. Ruhl describes this insight as the
comprehensiveness principle:
The comprehensiveness principle: The measure of a word’s semantic
contribution is not accuracy (in a single context) but compre-
hensiveness (in all contexts).9
Providing a method to actualize this comprehensive approach,
Ruhl’s hypothesis in On Monosemy is twofold: (1) “A word has a
single meaning,” and (2) “If a word has more than one meaning,
its meanings are related by general rules.”10 As he explains, “An
meaning that accurately describes each linguistic sign in a language. Diver
began to work out his theoretical approach in the 1960s, and thus the school of
thought he originated constitutes a precursor to Ruhl’s work. Ruhl at one point
mentions the meaning–message distinction in reference to several Columbia
School proponents. See Ruhl, On Monosemy, 33. For an outline of Diver’s
theory, with a description of his originality, see Huffman, “Linguistics of
Will iam Diver.” A second minimalist linguistic analysis has already been
mentioned, namely, Stanley Porter’s Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New
Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood. Porter’s approach seeks to
explain the formal features of the Greek verbal system. For Porter (Verbal
Aspect, 7), “formal” features are morphologically-based. Porter (Verbal Aspect,
13, 75) thus identifies morphological categories, and attempts to explain as
much data as possible with little to no exceptions by postulating a single,
consistent meaning for each grammatical form. Verbal Aspect was published in
the same year as Ruhl’s On Monosemy, and thus these works both represent
important though apparently independent advances in minimalist linguistics.
Furthermore, while Ruhl addresses lexical monosemy, Porter’s work focuses on
grammatical monosemy. Though Diver had originally analyzed part of the
Greek verbal system, Porter’s analysis has—unlike Diver’s—stood the test of
time. See discussion of Diver’s analysis in Reid, “Quantitative Analysis.”
Ultimately, Ruhl’s work on monosemy, particularly his accounts of
comprehensiveness and abstraction, was not unprecedented.
9. Ruhl, “Data, Comprehensiveness, Monosemy,” 172.
10. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 4.
102 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
initial presumption of monosemy does not question the existence
of multiplicity; rather, it implies that current analyses find too
much multiplicity too easily, and so provides a means for testing
each particular claim.”11 This initial presumption Ruhl terms a
“monosemic bias.”
While the term bias seems to imply that monosemy is a
theoretical position, a predisposition toward the data—and there
is some truth to this—what Ruhl actually advocates is a method
of identifying a word’s semantics. “This Monosemic Bias,” he
explains, “implies a priority of research: a full detailed
exploration of a word’s variant range before considering its
possible paraphrase relationships with other lexical items.”12 The
bias he speaks of, then, is actually a method of analysis:
“Assume that any meaning that is not present in all contexts of a
word is not part of the word’s inherent meaning; if this fails,
assume distinct meanings are figuratively related.”13 That is,
Ruhl argues that lexical analysis should proceed from the
assumption of monosemy, attempting to explain observed
variations in meaning by positing pragmatic mechanisms at work
in actual utterances.14 An example will be useful.
3.1 Pragmatic Factorization of Ἀρχή
The noun ἀρχή is assigned seven senses in BDAG:15
(1) The commencement of something as an action, process, or state of
11. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 5.
12. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 4.
13. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 234.
14. For Ruhl, the terms pragmatic and semantic are moving targets,
though they always identify some kind of boundary between what is contextual
and what is decontextualized to some degree. At times, he seems to be saying
that semantics is concerned with invariant meaning at some rank (word, word
group, sentence, paragraph, or discourse), whereas pragmatics concerns
meaning beyond the rank being analyzed. At other times Ruhl describes
semantics as intralinguistic meaning and pragmatics specifically as
extralinguistic meaning. See Ruhl, On Monosemy, 17. However, see discussion
below of Lappenga’s assessment of Ruhl’s use of these terms.
15. Ruhl frequently uses the treatments of dictionaries as an entry point
when seeking a common denominator.
WISHART Monosemy in Biblical Studies 103
being, beginning
(2) One with whom a process begins, beginning
(3) The first cause, the beginning
(4) A point at which two surfaces or lines meet, corner
(5) A basis for further understanding, beginning
(6) An authority figure who initiates activity or process, ruler, authority
(7) The sphere of one’s official activity, rule, office
Each of these senses can be tentatively related to a general sense
of INITIATION,16 whether that be temporal as in (1), spatial as in
(4), or mental as in (5). These uses show that ἀρχή does not carry
within itself the more concrete distinctions of spatial–non-
spatial, temporal–atemporal, mental–physical; rather, ἀρχή can
relate to any of these, but only by virtue of co-text and context.
Moreover, the senses offered in BDAG exhibit several notable
uses of metonymy. Senses (2) through (3) can be understood as
metonymic specification, more concretely specifying the
beginning as the entity who causes the beginning. The
metonymically-shifted meaning of the causative entity can be
further metonymized to refer to the role associated with the
entity—the entity’s office or rule. According to the nuances
reflected in senses (2) and (3), furthermore, this beginning is not
marked as either the beginning or simply abeginning. In the
spatial beginning of (4) we see asimilar imprecision: the corner
appears to the observer to be the place where something begins;
it is abeginning, while not necessarily constituting the only or
first. Thus, these observations can be restated as pragmatic
mechanisms:
(a) spatiality condition: ἀρχή does not semantically distinguish between
spatial and non-spatial meaning. Whether the term refers to a spatial
meaning is determined pragmatically.
(b) temporality condition: context is also required to distinguish between
temporal and atemporal meaning. The temporality of the sense is
16. The use of small caps is an orthographic convention that I have
adopted from Columbia School work. My intention is to signal a definition or
meaning—one that in some sense parallels the sparsity or indeterminacy of the
term being defined—while avoiding the misunderstanding that a meaning like
INITIATION is a gloss or translation equivalent for the term being defined. For a
Columbia School example, see Huffman, Categories of Grammar, 31.
104 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
determined pragmatically.
c) physicality condition: ἀρχή must be contextually modulated to
distinguish between mental or physical senses. Mental or physical
meaning is determined pragmatically.
d) ἀρχή can be metonymically extended to refer to the causative entity that
initiates a process, or further generalized to the causative entity’s role.
These figurative extensions are determined pragmatically.
What I am doing is simply noting the variation in meaning that is
evidenced among the various senses and describing those
variations as pragmatic effects. The rationale behind this move is
simple: if ἀρχή can potentially mean any of these various senses,
it does not convey any one of them specifically; rather, the
variation is best explained with reference to pragmatic
conditioning—that is, the effect of co-text and context—or to
figurative extensions of more concrete senses.
Important questions at this point include where the pragmatic
conditions come from and how many one is allowed to posit to
explain the data. Ruhl offers an explanation:
By now, some readers may have the uneasy feeling that pragmatic
rules are beginning to proliferate without restraint. A good theorist is
likely to wonder where it will end. But linguists who expect to find a
limited number of pragmatic rules, or rules typically with only a few
options, are mistaking the task; they are trying to make pragmatic
rules into semantic rules. Listing pragmatic rules may be an infinite
task: all knowledge of the world can be included. In dealing with
language, we are used to expecting only a few possibilities; but
pragmatic rules can be much more various, since our full knowledge
is much more various. This difference between semantic and
pragmatic (between what is relatively closed and what is relatively
open) is a key part of this book’s argument. A pragmatic rule is
justified if it accounts for data, and as fully as possible.17
The first step in Ruhl’s method is to outline the variation—even
the polysemy—of a word as it is actually used in utterances:
what kind of variation in meaning can be observed? Here I have
assumed that BDAG offers a relatively thorough account of the
variation ἀρχή exhibits, though it is likely that BDAG has
17. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 36.
WISHART Monosemy in Biblical Studies 105
underestimated the amount and scope of this variation.18 The
boundaries between senses are subjectively assigned, but the
semantics of the word, according to Ruhl’s minimalist notion of
semantics, are more objective—though not totally objective, of
course—by virtue of the fact that one must identify those
pragmatic effects that are not common to “all” contexts of a
word. One cannot be objective when identifying the contextually
modulated message of an utterance, because there are too many
variables to consider, and the reader brings numerous
assumptions to the text. Only after this diversity in meaning is
noted can a line be drawn between a word’s semantics and its
pragmatic modulations. As Ruhl explains, “the boundary of
semantic and pragmatic cannot be drawn generally in advance,
but must be discovered, word by word, phrase by phrase, even
sentence and discourse by sentence and discourse. No reasonable
theory can evade or postpone this necessity.”19 As for ἀρχή,
perhaps INITIATION does capture the semantics of the word;
perhaps it does not. What it does attempt is the identification of a
unifying factor that draws together all of the various senses of
ἀρχή without overspecifying or resorting to etymology or
“original meaning.” I leave it to the reader to evaluate the
preliminary semantic definition offered in this brief example.
To summarize: Ruhl ascertains a lexeme’s semantics by
pragmatic factorization.20 Pragmatic factorization explains
variation, rather than simply recording it. By positing pragmatic
mechanisms, Ruhl attempts to account for how a stable semantic
core of meaning is modulated by context.
18. As Ruhl (On Monosemy, 173) says, “I am arguing that we cannot
discover the sense(s) of a word without fully gauging its applications.
Dictionary definitions, especially of common words, highlight a few
applications, which implicitly deny a unified sense, and thus underestimate the
full range of applications.”
19. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 71.
20. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 71. I have introduced the description
“pragmatic factorization” for clarity. Ruhl calls this method a monosemic bias.
106 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
4. Fewster’s Creation Language in Romans 8 (2013)
Gregory Fewster’s work, exploring the ramifications of
analyzing Paul’s use of “creation language,” especially the noun
κτίσις in Romans 8, constitutes the first major monograph
dedicated to exploring the impact of lexical monosemy in New
Testament studies. Fewster’s work deserves careful attention, as
lexical analysis is an area of biblical studies that has exhibited
widespread and systemic problems.21 Here I will offer an
overview of Fewster’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)-
based model of lexical analysis, which he calls “corpus-driven
systemic-functional monosemy.”22 Second, I will take issue with
two aspects of Fewster’s study: his dismissal of Ruhl’s model of
monosemy as simply a “cognitive” approach, and his method of
analyzing metaphorical or figurative word meanings, which is
less adequate than the method proposed by Ruhl.
4.1 Summary of Fewster’s Corpus-Driven Systemic-Functional
Monosemy
Fewster’s goal is to “describe and defend . . . a robust lexical
semantic methodology.”23 He accomplishes this task by
undertaking a study that (1) covers a general theory of words, (2)
analyzes a particular word by means of corpus data, and (3)
introduces a nuanced account of a “lexicogrammatical metaphor
theory.”24 Each of these steps will be summarized in order.
4.1.1 Systemic functional monosemy.Of primary importance to
Fewster’s modelling of Paul’s language is the systemic nature of
language.25 SFL, according to Fewster, views language as a
“social semiotic,” realizing social realities by means of language
functions that are constrained by a language-specific system of
21. Fewster, Creation Language, 13–17; Lappenga, Paul’s Language,
10–13.
22. Fewster, Creation Language, 73.
23. Fewster, Creation Language, 17.
24. Fewster, Creation Language, 83.
25. Another important feature is the functional nature of language, but I
will deal with this below; here I will focus on the systemic aspect.
WISHART Monosemy in Biblical Studies 107
choices.26 In other words, the book of Romans is a social
interaction between Paul and his readers, and this interaction is
realized or constituted by the functional language Paul uses in
the letter. The meaningfulness of the functions Paul performs—
the meaning of what he says—depends on what he could have
said instead. The meaning of one language choice depends on the
other choices that were available to the speaker. Therefore, the
meaning of Paul’s creation language in Romans 8, on Fewster’s
SFL-based model, should be analyzed in comparison to the
systemically-constrained choices available to Paul, and the
mutual realization that takes place between the context of
situation and the language involved.27
4.1.2 Corpus-driven analysis. When it comes to the data Fewster
chooses to incorporate into his analysis, he uses a corpus-driven
approach. He explains, “Sound conclusions require, first and
foremost, a reasonable and balanced environment for
observation.”28 This environment is provided by a corpus of
texts. That is, instead of focusing solely on a small sample text,
such as Romans, he compiles a corpus of representative
documents.29 He goes on to clarify, “A corpus is used to provide
statistically relevant data based on patterns in language instances
that can be generalized to the language as a whole, from which
specific texts might be compared.”30 Fewster chooses to draw
generalizations from a large sample of language in order to better
26. Fewster, Creation Language, 39.
27. It should be pointed out that this view of language is not
fundamentally at odds with other approaches to language, such as Relevance
Theory (which is the framework of choice for Lappenga’s analysis; see below).
Contra Clark (Relevance Theory, 359), the difference between these approaches
is simply the locus of analysis. Where SFL considers the bidirectional impact of
language on context and context on language, Relevance Theory chooses
instead to focus on the (more or less) unidirectional impact of language upon
the reader’s mental state.
28. Fewster, Creation Language, 53.
29. See “Appendix One: Outline of Specialized Corpus,” in Fewster,
Creation Language, 175–76.
30. Fewster, Creation Language, 54.
108 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
understand a smaller sample, and this approach lends cogency to
his analysis.
4.1.3 Lexicogrammatical metaphor. A third aspect of Fewster’s
approach is a lexicogrammatical view of words as regards
metaphor. That is, whereas traditional grammar represents lexis
(word-choice) and grammar as entirely distinct areas of language
meaning, Fewster chooses to view lexis as a grammatical
choice—that is, lexicogrammar unites the two.31
Fewster should be commended for attempting to account for
metaphorical word usage using a lexicogrammatical view of
language. The idea of lexicogrammar is powerful, even though
much work remains to be done. For example, we have lexicons
of Hellenistic Greek, and we have grammar books—some of
these are better than others—but we do not have lexicogrammars
of Hellenistic Greek. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine what a
lexicogrammar would actually look like. Nevertheless, such
questions need to be explored, as they will open up new avenues
of grammatical analysis that cannot be addressed according to
the traditional lexis–grammar distinction. Fewster’s attempt to
outline a theory of lexicogrammatical metaphor, I would argue,
is on precisely the right track.
Fewster also examines metaphorical usage from the
perspective of monosemy. In his model, metaphor involves an
atypical usage of a lexeme. However, this atypical usage not only
includes the usual tropes like anger is heat, or argument is war.
These kinds of atypical usages constitute lexical metaphors
because they involve lexical meanings. Lexicogrammatical
metaphor is an atypical usage of a lexeme in which grammatical
meanings are involved.32 An example that comes up in Fewster’s
study is κτίσις, which typically refers to a created thing, an entity,
but which can also be used to refer to the process of creating.
This usage, Fewster argues, demonstrates grammatical metaphor
because the process κτίζω is lexicalized as a noun, κτίσις. This
31. Fewster, Creation Language, 44–45. Cf. pp. 82–93.
32. Halliday and Matthiessen, Halliday’s Introduction, 698–731;
Thompson, Introducing Functional Grammar, 233–54.
WISHART Monosemy in Biblical Studies 109
kind of grammatical metaphor is called nominalization.
Lexicogrammatical metaphor, then, attempts to take account of
the fact that metaphors can be lexical or grammatical, or even
both at the same time. While I affirm the effort to view lexis and
grammar as a continuity, I will outline some issues with
Fewster’s approach to lexicogrammatical metaphor in the next
section.
4.2 Critical Assessment of Fewster’s Creation Language in
Romans 8
There are two general issues I want to raise with respect to
Creation Language. First, Fewster misrepresents key aspects of
Ruhlian monosemy. While this misrepresentation is probably
unintentional, a clearer account of Ruhl’s method would have
helped Fewster avoid needless, and perhaps deleterious,
duplication of some of Ruhl’s methodological steps. Second,
Fewster’s proposed method of analyzing metaphorical or
figurative word meaning is weaker than Ruhl’s proposed
method. In some ways, Creation Language prematurely
dismisses Ruhl because of a perceived association with cognitive
linguistics, and this premature dismissal causes Fewster to miss
out on some of Ruhl’s insights regarding monosemic analysis.
4.2.1 Fewster’s construal of Ruhl. In Fewster’s monograph, he
adopts Ruhl’s theory of monosemy, but with hesitation. He is
critical of Ruhl’s theory on the grounds that it is, he claims,
based in “cognitive linguistics.”33 Fewster explains,
Ruhl’s version of ‘extreme monosemy’ does have some shortcomings
in terms of its utility in the present context. Monosemy is
fundamentally a cognitive linguistic theory and in that regard is
primarily concerned with a lexeme’s semantics as it relates to the
conceptual ordering of the mind, and thus shares many of the
shortcomings of cognitive polysemy. The theory, therefore, may be
unable to adequately address meaning in terms of social interaction.34
33. Fewster, Creation Language, 36–37.
34. Fewster, Creation Language, 39.
110 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
Several things can be said in response to this claim. First, Ruhl
actually self-identifies as a tranformational-generative linguist.
To pigeonhole his theory as a “cognitive linguistic theory” is
simply unclear. There are aspects of Ruhlian monosemy that can
be called cognitive in some sense. For example, generalized
definitions, Ruhl argues, best reflect the way we remember
words, and his notion of semantic fields, he claims, reflects the
structure of the human mind in terms of the way we draw
abstractions. However, it is unclear why this “cognitive” element
should disqualify Ruhl’s arguments without further critique,
especially as Ruhl’s monosemic bias does not require analysis of
cognitive aspects of meaning. Moreover, whereas cognitive
linguistics is generally maximalist in its approach,35 Ruhlian
monosemy is a minimalist endeavour.36 Grouping Ruhl together
with cognitivists thus obscures the distinctiveness of his position.
Second, the world is not divided into cognitive and functional
linguistics. Rather, cognitive linguistics, a movement that
emerged in the 1980s, takes the functional nature of language to
be fundamental.37 So while Fewster is fully justified in adopting
SFL as a framework, I would argue that Ruhlian monosemy is
compatible with functionalism, including both social and
cognitive frameworks. This is an important point to make,
because if monosemy is going to have a broad impact on biblical
studies, it will need to be, to some degree, framework
independent. SFL asks distinctive questions about language
instances, but it is not inherently better than cognitive
approaches; it is just better at answering the distinctive questions
that it asks.
For example, SFL asks why particular language is used, and
finds its answer in the particular context of use.38 Moreover,
35. Geeraerts, Theories of Lexical Semantics, 183.
36. Ruhl, On Monosemy, xi.
37. Geeraerts, Theories of Lexical Semantics, 267.
38. Fewster (Creation Language, 39) explains, “Context informs
language use, while language use in turn forms and re-forms the social context.
Systemic [functional] linguistics, therefore, posits a direct link between a given
context and the use of language within that context.”
WISHART Monosemy in Biblical Studies 111
because language is an irreducibly social phenomenon, a
particular context of language use is necessarily describable as a
social context—and SFL proponents would argue that this is
actually the most appropriate way to view the context. Yet I
would agree with Fewster that it is possible to adopt a social,
functional framework, to ask social and functional questions, and
nevertheless to utilize key features of Ruhl’s approach to word
meaning.
This claim is evident when we consider the building blocks of
Fewster’s theory and method. Fewster’s account is theoretically
rigorous. He introduces, independently of Ruhl, a corpus-driven
approach, a systemic view of language, and a lexicogrammatical
view of language, and he explains the advantages of SFL over a
“cognitive” approach by citing its systemic view of language
choice and meaning, its functional approach to analysis, and the
fact that lexis and grammar are treated as ends on a continuum.
Yet each of these theoretical and methodological building blocks
is already demonstrably present in Ruhl’s monograph. Ruhl does
view language as a system, he adopts a mediating approach
between formalist and functionalist approaches,39 he bases his
observations on the examination of naturally-occurring
utterances, and he explicitly treats lexis and grammar as parts of
a broader continuum from abstract to concrete.40 Moreover, all of
these points are in fact theoretically indispensable for Ruhl’s
method of ascertaining what words mean. So while Fewster is
fully justified in looking to other sources as he examines each of
these issues, the premature nature of his dismissal of Ruhl’s
monosemy is evidenced by his inclusion of additional pieces of
theoretical infrastructure as though Ruhl’s theory does not
already provide them.
Third, Fewster’s method of analyzing lexemes, though
developed in detail, lacks the coherence that makes Ruhl’s
method so attractive in the first place. Ruhl’s hypothesis is, very
simply, that contextual information can be filtered out of a
semantic definition by positing pragmatic conditions that
39. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 200.
40. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 182–83.
112 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
account for the meaning variation that is evident. Fewster may
be attempting this kind of pragmatic explanation, but it is unclear
how his analysis takes place. He simply presents his findings
along with a number of corpus examples and some discussion.
Noting these points, I find it perplexing when Fewster states,
“In light of its [Ruhl’s theory’s] (occasionally unhelpful)
cognitive beginnings, I have shifted the notion of the monosemic
bias into a systemic functional framework. In this light,
abstracted semantic values are understood as meaning potential
that is realized in the lexicogrammar of discourse.”41 It is unclear
by what procedure Fewster actually arrives at his “abstracted
semantic values.”
4.2.2 Fewster’s lexicogrammatical metaphor. In addition to these
concerns about Fewster’s representation of Ruhl, I have concerns
about the way that Fewster identifies a metaphorical usage as an
atypical or “dynamic” usage of a lexeme that diverges from the
“typical” or “congruent” usage.42 This way of understanding the
distinction between literal and metaphorical is underdeveloped at
best. Contrary to Fewster’s claims, it is unlikely that the literal
meaning of a word can be reliably determined on the basis of
frequency or “typicality.”43 A metaphorical extension of a word is
41. Fewster, Creation Language, 167.
42. Fewster, Creation Language, 88.
43. Iam interpreting Fewster’s comments on pp. 88–89, where he says
that corpus analysis reveals the most typical patterns of usage, to entail that
typicality is amatter of numerical frequency, as this seems the most likely way
to read his explanation. Fewster may have meant something different by
statements like “typicality in a corpus” and “the corpus is a helpful tool for
measuring congruence”—perhaps something more akin to Halliday’s view of
congruent usage as “the most straightforward coding of the meanings selected”
(Halliday and Matthiessen, Halliday’s Introduction, 731). However, neither
Fewster’s nor Halliday and Matthiessen’s actual method of identifying what is
congruent is obvious in their discussions. Fewster sometimes describes
congruent and typical usages as the same thing, but he also notes that
metaphorical uses may be typical. Regardless, my argument in this section is
that Fewster would have been better served theoretically by engaging with the
approach to metaphor analysis already provided by Ruhl.
WISHART Monosemy in Biblical Studies 113
not just an atypical usage, but a non-literal or figuratively
extended use of a word.
I suggest that Ruhl’s understanding of metaphor and his
method of distinguishing literal from figurative usages are more
intuitive and reliable than Fewster’s, because of Ruhl’s
programmatic definition of abstraction as superordinacy.
Viewing a vocabulary as a cline of increasing concretion, Ruhl is
able to make sense of figurative usage in away Fewster cannot.
This is best illustrated by way of example.
In On Monosemy, Ruhl analyzes the noun ice. What he finds
is that there are at least two meanings of ice that are very
difficult to relate to each other. On the one hand, ice can be
defined as “water frozen solid.”44 But, notes Ruhl, this literal
meaning does not encompass figurative, emotion-related uses of
ice (i.e. implying fear or horror). So on the one hand, as “water
frozen solid,” ice is a very concrete word—that is, it is easily
referable to an extralinguistic reality, and on the other hand, as a
sense of fear or horror, ice is a more abstract word. According to
Ruhl, this is an example of metaphoric extension because the
more abstract sense can be understood as a figurative extension
of the concrete sense. In fact, if ice did not literally mean “water
frozen solid,” it is unclear how ice as a sense of dread would
make sense at all—a sense of dread is like the feeling of ice. The
direction of figurative extension here is critical; frozen water is
not called ice because it is like a sense of dread, but a sense of
dread can be called ice because it (apparently) reminds us of the
feeling of water frozen solid. Fewster claims that the more
frequent meaning is the literal, and the atypical meaning is the
figurative; by contrast, Ruhl demonstrates that the literal
meaning is rather the more concrete of the two meanings, the one
on which the figurative meaning relies for meaningfulness and
comparison. “Water frozen solid” is the ground; fear or horror is
the figure. Thus, Fewster’s own model of metaphor, while
attempting to incorporate the lexicogrammatical perspective
Ruhl outlines, nevertheless neglects the programmatic definition
44. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 192.
114 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
of abstraction that makes monosemic metaphor analysis
coherent.
Moving through the final chapters of Fewster’s monograph,
one is left somewhat confused as to the necessity of the
monosemous lexical analysis offered earlier on. This confusion
arises in part from Fewster’s inclusion of an abstracted,
monosemic gloss alongside of an account of its metaphorical
extension. In the monograph, κτίσις is accorded the gloss
“created thing.”45 However, Fewster also contends that κτίσις
participates in a semantic domain/chain that interacts with other
semantic domains/chains in the construction of a large-scale
metaphor about the redemption of humanity—the created
things.46 If κτίσις is a monosemous word that can refer literally to
the created human body—as Fewster contends—its use in
Romans 8 is literal, not metaphorical.47 On Fewster’s own
analysis, then, I would argue that a metaphorical extension of
κτίσις does not actually occur in Romans 8. Because Fewster
combines lexical and grammatical metaphor into one theoretical
conception, he attempts to explain a large scale conceptual
metaphor (involving multiple lexemes) as no different than a
grammatical metaphor, and ends up describing a non-figurative
use of κτίσις as a metaphor when in fact the usage of κτίσις in
question fits with the monosemous definition he himself assigns
to it.
If κτίσις is a monosemic word that is used to refer to created
things, including the human body, then its use in referring to the
human body is not a figurative extension of its ground usage.
Κτίσις in Romans 8 does exhibit grammatical metaphor (if the
45. Fewster, Creation Language, 146.
46. Fewster, Creation Language, 123–24.
47. Fewster (Creation Language, 148) makes it clear that he has in mind
both lexical and grammatical metaphor, saying, “Nominalization of this sort is
lexicogrammatical metaphor at its clearest; there has been a shift in the
grammar of the passage, yet there are lexical implications as well. The choice
of the nominal κτίσεως in this clause [i.e. in Rom 8.19] is metaphorical in the
classical sense—one thing is being referred to in terms of another.” Perhaps the
relationship between κτίσις and σῶµαcould better be construed as hyponymous
rather than metaphorical. That is, a σῶµα is a kind of κτίσις.
WISHART Monosemy in Biblical Studies 115
noun κτίσις is used to describe a process or act, although this
usage, too, could be included in a monosemic definition);
however, κτίσις does not exhibit lexical metaphor. Fewster’s
inclusion of grammatical metaphor is important in moving
lexical analysis forward for biblical studies, but his theory of
lexicogrammatical metaphor—at least in Creation Language—
ends up potentially misconstruing both lexical and grammatical
metaphor as they pertain to κτίσις.
In summary, Fewster’s Creation Language is an intriguing
attempt at incorporating lexical monosemy into biblical studies,
tested in regards to κτίσις in Romans 8. Fewster successfully
demonstrates both the appeal of the theory and its utility for
biblical studies. His analysis is cast in the framework of SFL, yet
readers from various perspectives will benefit from his study.
While I have outlined several areas that require further
development or clarity, Creation Language is an important
trailblazing work that is sure to play a critical role in the
conversation about lexical semantics in biblical studies.
5. Lappenga’s Paul’s Language of Ζῆλος (2015)
The second monograph I wish to discuss here is Benjamin
Lappenga’s Paul’s Language of Ζῆλος: Monosemy and the
Rhetoric of Identity and Practice. Discussion of this study will
be brief for two reasons: first, Lappenga does not attempt to
outline an extensive linguistic method as does Fewster;48 second,
Lappenga’s study employs an onomasiological rather than a
semasiological approach.49 A semasiological approach begins
with (typically) a linguistic sign (or signs) and proceeds to
ascertain information about that sign’s meaning within a speech
community. An onomasiological approach, by contrast, begins
with a meaning that occurs and then explores its communication
by means of various linguistic signs.50 In order to explore how
48. This is not meant to imply a deficiency in Lappenga’s study, only that
Fewster dedicates much more space to outlining his linguistic methodology.
49. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 66.
50. As Geeraerts (Theories of Lexical Semantics, 23) puts it,
116 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
Paul talks about Christian social identity and practice, Lappenga
examines the concept of zeal by means of the ζηλ- word group.
Because Lappenga’s monograph is not strictly dedicated to
linguistic analysis, his account of monosemy is briefer. I will
primarily assess Lappenga’s comments and critiques with respect
to both Ruhl and Fewster’s approaches to monosemy, with a
brief discussion of Lappenga’s alternative method. While I am
largely critical of Lappenga’s engagement with Fewster and
Ruhl, Lappenga’s approach to monosemy, which he casts within
the framework of Relevance Theory, presents an intriguing
approach to using monosemy for qualitative lexical analysis.
5.1 Lappenga’s Account of Ruhl
Lappenga’s proposal for monosemy, while innovative and
promising, is unfortunately situated within what I take to be
unjustified and highly critical discourse. He identifies three
problems with Ruhl’s On Monosemy: (1) the “need for more
terminological clarity regarding semantics and pragmatics,” (2)
“overconfidence about our ability to determine what is in fact a
‘convention,’” and (3) Ruhl’s claims about general, abstracted
word meaning.51 Each of these points deserves a response.
First, Ruhl, contrary to what Lappenga claims, does offer a
nuanced account of the semantics–pragmatics interface.
Although this particular issue is mentioned throughout Ruhl’s
book, Section 7.2, “Semantic–Pragmatic,” is particularly
notable.52
Second, I would question Lappenga’s assertion that Ruhl
exhibits overconfidence. Lappenga, for his part, takes a highly
individualized view of lexical meaning, given that everyone
must have an ultimately unique mental lexicon.53 Ruhl’s idea of
“semasiology starts from the expression and looks at its meanings,
onomasiology starts from the meaning and looks at the different expressions.”
51. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 29.
52. Ruhl’s alleged lack of clarity is attributed to a few stray comments at
the beginning of On Monosemy, which Ruhl subsequently elaborates upon.
53. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 44. However, Lappenga attempts to
identify mental lexicon entries primarily in regard to the effect of written texts
on the readers of that text.
WISHART Monosemy in Biblical Studies 117
generalized semantic meaning shared by users of a language,
then, would seem to be in conflict with this position. However,
one of the key themes of On Monosemy is the complex
interaction between language as an idealized system of
conventional meanings and language as a highly diverse set of
events and instances. The following quotation hopefully answers
Lappenga’s charge of “overconfidence about our ability to
determine what is in fact a ‘convention.’” Ruhl explains that
only some linguistic knowledge is conventional or shared among
all users of a given language:
some words are common knowledge, while others are not; and, even
with a common-knowledge word, some of its contexts are common
and some are not. That is, we have both unity among all speakers, and
on a fairly specific level, and also diversity, by dialect, idiolect,
register, or otherwise.
Iam claiming that some knowledge of a language is shared by all
speakers of that language. More generally, some highly abstract
knowledge will be common to speakers of all languages.54
Rather than exhibiting overconfidence, Ruhl simply attempts to
make generalizations of the data.
Third, Lappenga notes that “Ruhl’s proposal for monosemy
moves in the right direction but falls short because of its reliance
on a lowest common denominator approach to ‘general
meaning.’”55 What Lappenga specifically objects to is the
apparent uselessness of a meaning that is abstracted from all
contextual usages. He claims, “Even if certain patterns can be
detected among the uses of a word, how can such a vague
‘general meaning’ be useful, particularly to the study of ancient
texts such as those found in the NT?”56 Similarly, he refers to this
perspective on semantic meaning as “fruitless abstraction.”57
This point is the most important, as it presents a potentially
serious objection to the use of Ruhlian monosemy in biblical
studies. After all, if it is useless, then it is unlikely to appeal to
54. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 144–45.
55. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 54.
56. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 30.
57. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 31.
118 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
biblical scholars who are exploring the potential usefulness of
linguistics within the field of biblical scholarship. Because this
third critique of Ruhl dovetails so much with Lappenga’s critique
of Fewster, however, I will proceed to this latter critique and
mention Ruhl where relevant.
5.2 Lappenga’s Account of Fewster (and Ruhl)
According to Lappenga, Relevance Theory is a framework for
explaining how words come to have particular meaning in texts,
not an explicit method for identifying those meanings.58 For a
method of definition, therefore, he turns to Ruhl’s monosemy.
Based on his understanding of Ruhl, Lappenga does not attempt
to define zeal, and actually critiques Fewster for defining κτίσις.
Ruhlian monosemy, according to Lappenga, is a theory of the
radical underspecification of words; words cannot be adequately
defined, hence they should not be defined.59
Unfortunately, this is a misunderstanding of Ruhl. Using a
paraphrase to describe a lexeme is not a problem, because Ruhl’s
theory does not explicitly reject paraphrases; he argues only that
many, not all, words are incapable of being adequately
paraphrased.60 In fact, Ruhl explicitly claims the opposite of
what Lappenga asserts. As noted above, Ruhl defines ice as
“water frozen solid.”61 Lappenga offers the argument that only
procedural (i.e. grammatical) but not conceptual words can be
paraphrased. Yet Ruhl paraphrases ice because it is a conceptual
58. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 52. According to Relevance Theory, the
most relevant mental items are activated for the lexeme’s mental grab-bag.
59. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 34–35.
60. Lappenga (Paul’s Language, 55) notes that, in contrast to Ruhl’s
work, Fretheim’s “more helpful” study of monosemy also uses paraphrases, but
explains that this is not as problematic as Ruhl’s use because Fretheim offers
definitions for procedural words, rather than conceptual words. Cf. Fretheim,
“In Defence of Monosemy.” Fretheim analyzes four terms, and the last
(Norwegian: med en gang/med det samme)is actually, according to Fretheim, a
conceptual lexeme, with an encoded “conceptual meaning” shared, moreover,
by the two “synonymous lexical items” (“In Defence of Monosemy,” 107).
61. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 200.
WISHART Monosemy in Biblical Studies 119
rather than grammatical word.62 Contrary to Lappenga’s
construal of Ruhl, Ruhl actually says, “A literal meaning [i.e.
definition] need not be solely semantic, if at all.”63 In other
words, a definition should usually include some pragmatic
information; the more concrete the word, the more pragmatic
information is necessary in order to produce an adequate
definition. Though I agree with Lappenga that the way Fewster
arrives at his definition of κτίσις is unclear, it is a
misrepresentation when Lappenga labels Ruhl’s notion of
general meaning a “fruitless abstraction” that Fewster “does not
move past.”64
Lappenga also mistakenly critiques Porter and Fewster for
merely “paying lip service to Ruhl,”65 claiming, “My approach
maintains ties with Ruhl; Fewster’s does not.”66 I find this to be a
puzzling critique in three ways. First, both parties are manifestly
advocating the use of a monosemic bias within biblical studies,
so why not highlight the common ground? Second, neither party
even refers to, much less interacts critically with or “maintains
ties with” Ruhl’s theory as it is developed beyond the first few
chapters of On Monosemy.67 Third, there is no reason beyond
62. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 177.
63. Ruhl, On Monosemy, 192–93.
64. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 31–33. In particular, Lappenga (Paul’s
Language, 35–36) claims, “Like Porter, Fewster proposes a monosemic
meaning that, although paying lip service to Ruhl, fundamentally diverges from
Ruhl’s radical underspecification of semantic content in favor of a readily
definable monosemic value . . . Yet Fewster has neither endorsed Ruhlian
monosemy nor offered an alternative semantics-based argument for the
monosemic bias. Thus it is difficult to see how either Porter’s or Fewster’s
‘monosemic account’ has moved us any further than other proposals for
‘general meaning.’” Lappenga’s critique specifically concerns the use of a
“readily definable monosemic value,” as opposed to a radically
underspecified—or unspecifiable—semantic value. This critique would hold
more water if Ruhl did not explicitly offer paraphrases/definitions for other
words such as ice.
65. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 35.
66. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 36.
67. As far as Ican tell, neither Fewster nor Lappenga actually makes
reference to Ruhl beyond the halfway point of his monograph. Porter
120 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
utility or coherence to demand strict adherence to one theory.
Lappenga should know this, as he proceeds to castigate Ruhl’s
notion of general meaning while still attempting to utilize a
monosemic bias. As long as coherence is achieved, theorists are
free to be creative.
Lappenga points out that “Fewster’s dismissal of cognitive
approaches is far too sweeping, since language-in-use can in fact
interact efficiently with a cognitive framework.”68 As noted
above, I agree with Lappenga’s critique on this point. However, I
find Lappenga’s dismissal of Fewster to be equally sweeping.
“Unfortunately,” Lappenga disputes, “by dispensing with the
way Ruhl understands monosemy actually to function, Fewster
has forfeited any substantive theoretical basis for holding to a
monosemic bias.”69 I cannot see why this critique does not cut
both ways. It is unclear how Lappenga’s own particular reading
of Ruhl justifies adopting Ruhl’s method, much as it is unclear
how Fewster’s reading of Ruhl condemns Fewster’s own
appropriation of monosemy. Luckily for both authors, this
critique in fact cuts neither way. There is no fundamental affinity
or dissonance between monosemy and either Relevance Theory
or SFL, and whether one framework is closer to Ruhl’s than the
other is entirely immaterial.
Fewster’s definition of κτίσις is also the object of Lappenga’s
criticism. The latter asks,
If ‘something that has been brought into existence’is present in all
occurrences [of κτίσις], how does Fewster account for instances
where the act of creation and not a thing is in view? . . . Fewster does
not consider such questions before arriving at his preferred
monosemic value for κτίσις.70
This critique is once again puzzling, since Fewster discusses
grammatical metaphor at length and explicitly notes that κτίσις
exhibits a common pattern of being a nominalization of the act
(Linguistic Analysis, 51–53) engages in a more thorough summary of Ruhl than
either.
68. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 37.
69. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 36.
70. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 36.
WISHART Monosemy in Biblical Studies 121
of creation. Thus, notes Fewster, “This nominalized construal
functions, first and foremost, to concretize the reader’s
experience of a creative act, that is to say, a creation always
implies a creative act.”71
In summary, Lappenga’s critiques of both Fewster and Ruhl
appear to be unwarranted. Thankfully, this does not invalidate
Lappenga’s own novel approach to monosemy, which I will now
briefly describe.
5.3 Lappegna’s Monosemy-Based, Relevance-Theory-Inspired
Analysis
Lappenga’s goal is to analyze the development of a concept
within Paul’s letters. While ζῆλος is assigned multiple senses in
the lexicon, Lappenga aims to identify what it is that
semantically bridges Paul’s repeated uses of the ζηλ-stem. Paul’s
repetition, he argues, is intended to shape the audience’s concept
of ζῆλος,to modify “the cognitive environment of the hearer.”72
“My argument,” he explains, “is that multiple occurrences within
a text or corpus do in fact shape one another, and that the
appropriate way to account for this (especially for exegetical
study) is to endorse a monosemic bias.”73
Lappenga relies on Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory,
with its attendant view of meaning: specifically, the meaning of
an utterance is underdetermined by the words used to
communicate it.74 An author chooses words that will convey the
most meaning while requiring the least effort. Ultimately, this
leads Lappenga to construe the ζηλ- word group as a “grab-bag”
of ideas and concepts that are variously activated in context
according to the audience’s assumptions about what is most
relevant to Paul’s message. “To summarize my proposal,” he
71. Fewster, Creation Language, 112.
72. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 41.
73. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 54. According to Lappenga, Paul creates
an ad hoc concept of zeal through repetition of the ζηλ-word group. It should
be noted that Fewster (Creation Language, 116), too, includes a discussion of
ad hoc domains.
74. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 41.
122 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
says, “a definition of ζῆλος might contain some elements that can
be communicated with words, but must be conceived of as a
single grab-bag of mental items (memories, mental images,
pieces of encyclopedic and/or anecdotal information).”75
Of course, words can be conceived of in many different ways.
Linguistic analysis is not merely the presentation of objective
facts about language; it necessarily involves a construal of
language. Psychological approaches to meaning analysis are not
inherently more suitable than social approaches any more than
psychology represents the human experience “better” than
sociology does. It is simply a matter of arriving at different
answers to different questions. Lappenga’s Relevance-Theory-
inspired approach to monosemy provides a useful tool for
discovering what can be made of key concepts in the biblical
text. Viewing multiple instances of a lexeme together helps us to
avoid the mistake of assuming that we cannot infer meaning
beyond what is explicitly lexicalized in a given utterance. “Most
important,” explains Lappenga, “is that the writer will leave
implicit everything the reader can be trusted to supply ‘with less
effort than would be needed to process an explicit prompt.’”76
Thus the analysis of concepts, in light of Lappenga’s study,
should not attempt merely to reproduce the explicatures of the
biblical text; it should also seek to identify the most relevant
implicatures, with the aim that we would read the entire text
according to its own implicit and explicit aims, so far as those
can be inferred.
Though Lappenga diverges significantly from Ruhl, his
analysis of the ζηλ-stem fits well within Ruhl’s notion of
semantic fields. The stem, on this view, comprises a
superordinate category with semantic substance that is
subdivided more specifically by its hyponyms. Thus, Lappenga’s
approach to lexical analysis provides a case study in analysis of
lexical items using monosemy.
75. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 56.
76. Lappenga, Paul’s Language, 48. Citing Green, “Relevance Theory
and the Literary Text,” 215.
WISHART Monosemy in Biblical Studies 123
6. Conclusion
My primary critique of both Fewster and Lappenga is the limited
sense in which they conceive of monosemy as a methodology.
While Ruhl’s method involves positing pragmatic mechanisms to
factor out contextual modulation in order to identify a word’s
semantics, neither of the authors attempts an explicit analysis
along these lines. When they mention a “monosemic bias” they
seem to mean something like a willingness to assume that
monosemy is more correct than polysemy. Thus Fewster ends up
arriving at a definition based on a process that he does not make
entirely explicit in his monograph (he outlines many
observations, but does not explain exactly how he factors out
contextual modulation), and Lappenga decides to avoid
providing a definition altogether.
Fewster has displayed the corpus-linguistic use of a
monosemic bias within the framework of SFL, and Lappenga has
offered an example of how relevance theory can be used in
conjunction with monosemy to answer questions about concepts
within the biblical text. Both of these authors have helped to set
a trajectory for the kind of monosemy-based study that Porter
has proposed,77 and it is to be hoped that others will see the
potential as well. Future development should take cues from both
these authors, and methodological questions should continue to
be raised and answered.
Though I have offered a number of critical remarks regarding
both of the monographs mentioned in this review, my criticisms
do not detract from the value of either the monographs
themselves or the role that a monosemic bias plays in these
monographs. It is always easier to critically evaluate than to do
the hard work of theoretical trailblazing, and all the more so in
biblical studies, where traditional methods are heavily
entrenched. Both of these monographs have advanced the
minimalist trajectory for analyzing the meaning of words, and
for that the authors are to be strongly commended.
77. Porter, Linguistic Analysis, 59.
124 Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 6
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