RT list: context dependant verbs

Hi RT list, I am not sure I will express this correctly but here goes. There seems to be certain very common verbs that have significant variation in meaning based on context. For example, in ancient Greek, a verb like ERXOMAI can mean "go," "come," etc. Such meanings almost seem opposite. To me it seems such words bring very little semantic content to a communication situation and the context is key for understanding their meaning (of course all meaning is somewhat context dependent but these draw from it more than many others). Thus, (English trans of the Greek): "John went TO the house" can be contrasted with "John came FROM of the house". The distinction "come" vs "go" is dependent upon the prepositional phrase following. I guess a broad meaning can be postulated for the verb such as "MOVEMENT." This would thus seem to suggest a translation issue but for some reason there seems to be more to it than this. In both cases MOVEMENT seems to be less than what the verb is communicating. I am not sure whether to call these "pragmatically dependent" or "semantically weak" verbs (or I can be misreading this altogether). At essence they seem to not even be necessary at all since the context often makes their presence obvious. Is anyone aware of any work done on these seemingly common type of verbs. Sincerely, Joe Fantin Dallas Theological Seminary
Received on Wed Jan 14 17:32:01 2015