Speaking to One's Heart: דבר and its Semantic Extension

What it is about

The lexicons list many senses for דָּבָר: word, matter, affair, deed, thing, anything, plan, decision, request. The authors explain them as a radial category built mainly by metonymic chains. Part for whole: one "word" stands for a whole utterance, and is then glossed by the kind of speech act it is (report, command, request, claim). Medium for message: words stand for what they express — thoughts, plans, intentions, a decision (Deut 17:8–11), linked to the idiom "to speak in one's heart". With the verb "to do", דָּבָר becomes the act or event, and then the thing acted on. Beyond metonymy, a grammaticalised use: indefinite דָּבָר under negation means "anything/nothing" (Gen 19:8, 22; Deut 22:26), and in construct before a noun it individuates ("such a vile thing", Judg 19:24). Senses overlap even within one passage, so the same gloss cannot be assumed for nearby occurrences.

Ideas

• I1. Sense rules for דָּבָר in the Torah dictionary, by construction: object of a verb of speaking or with לֵאמֹר → "word(s)/speech"; object of עָשָׂה, especially with הַזֶּה → "thing/deed"; indefinite under לֹא/אַל or in a question → "anything/nothing"; in construct before an abstract noun (דְּבַר הַמִּשְׁפָּט) → the kind named by that noun. Measure each rule against the JPS rendering of every Torah occurrence.
• I2. "Speak in/to one's heart" (אָמַר/דִּבֶּר בְּלִבּוֹ / אֶל לִבּוֹ) → inner speech: a prag rule giving the quote voice "thought", not spoken dialogue.
• I3. A radial-sense layout for polysemous dictionary entries: core sense first, each extension tagged with its link (part-for-whole, medium-for-message, act, grammatical) so the entry says why the sense exists.
• I4. When דָּבָר stands for an utterance, the speech-act label of prag (command, request, report) can serve as its gloss; check whether the act of the quote that follows agrees with the English noun JPS uses.

For Mova

I1 and I3 are for the Torah dictionary (macula dict) and The lexicon (polysemy). I2 and I4 are candidate rules for tools/macula/src/prag.rs (voice; act), written up in 09-discourse.md (direct speech).

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.5508/jhs.2016.v16.a7

@article{mylonas2016speaking,
  title = {{Speaking to One's Heart: דבר and its Semantic Extension}},
  author = {Mylonas, Natalie and Llewelyn, Stephen and Wearne, Gareth},
  journal = {Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 16},
  year = {2016},
  doi = {10.5508/jhs.2016.v16.a7},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2016.v16.a7}
}

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo-2016-mylonas-speaking-one-s-heart-semantic/