The grammar of "Dylan goes electric"

As many have noted, this past week saw the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan's famed electric set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, preceded by the publication of Elijah Wald's book Dylan Goes Electric (which sounds like a good read).

While I am interested in the subject itself, I also have to confess an interest in the grammar of the short sentence "Dylan goes electric." My first idle question to myself was, What grammatical role does the adjective "electric" play in the sentence? My first idle answer was that it was functioning as an adverb, but a moment's thought demonstrated the wrongness of that answer. "Dylan goes electric" is not synonymous with "Dylan goes electrically"; i.e., "electric" doesn't describe how Dylan went.

But it's also not where he went, although the verb "to go" typically takes a complement indicating location. "Dylan goes electric" is not the same type of sentence as "Dylan goes home."

The key is that "to go" in the sentence is not functioning as a motion verb, but, as it often does, as a kind of linking verb, like be (prototypically), become, appear, seem. "Dylan goes electric" has a family resemblance to "Dylan is electric," "Dylan becomes elecric," "Dylan appears electric," "Dylan seems electric," or to non-Dylanesque sentences such as "Maggie went native" or "The lake goes flat when the wind subsides." NOUN + GO(linking) + ADJECTIVE means "NOUN adds property ADJECTIVE."

"Electric," then, is a predicative complement. But also the word "Dylan" requires a certain amount of semantic unpacking. In the sentence it is straightforwardly a Noun used as a Subject.  But it can't be interpreted straightforwardly as a proper noun, denoting the person Bob Dylan, who did not become electric. Here "Dylan" refers via metonymy to "Bob Dylan's music."

But "Dylan" = "Dylan's music" is not so simple, either. There is an overtone to "Dylan goes electric" that is not found in the paraphrase "Bob Dylan's music changed to electric (=using amplified instruments)." Some people blame or praise Dylan for going electric, which would make no sense if Dylan, the person, was not volitionally involved in the process. The thing is, "Dylan" has to refer simultaneously to the performer and the music.

The linguist James Pustejovsky has a name for words that display this kind of two-sidedness: dot objects. Dot objects display "inherent polysemy," that is, entities that can simultaneously be interpreted as two different types of entity.  One example is "book," which can be simultaneously "tome" and "content": "The book with a green cover [physical object] is interesting[story]."

This is signified by a dot: tome•content. One of the dot-object types is performer•product, which licenses "Dylan [performer•music] goes electric." The "performer" facet licenses the volitional feature of "goes," while the "product" licenses the predicate complement "electric."

By the way, judging by the video, the most "electric" part of the set was not Dylan's Stratocaster strumming, but the late Michael Bloomfield's face-melting Telecaster licks. In my opinion, the wrong guitar gets all the credit. Where is Bloomfield's Telecaster now? (EDIT: here.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY: James Pustejovsky, The Generative Lexicon (MIT Press, 1996); Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties (Harper Collins, 2015).

A Response to Kaufman's Review of DQA

S. A. Kaufman has taken in hand to offer some critiques and corrections to my recently published Dictionary of Qumran Aramaic.  Some of his remarks deserve consideration, while others reflect plain misreadings of the book or of the texts in question.  While I am grateful for the attention paid to the book by such an eminent Aramaist, and for the occasional faint praise, I deplore the overall snide and bullying tone of the piece, as well as the liberal, and unwarranted, use of the rhetoric of certainty, wherein Kaufman, speaking de haut en bas, frequently attaches “clearly” and “surely” to his own unsupported pronouncements.  

One of the drawbacks to Kaufman’s review is that he evidently failed to read the introduction, in which he would have found discussions of some of the issues he raises.  For instance, he regrets that I did not include the vocabulary of the Geniza Aramaic Levi Document, a decision that I discussed on page xviii.   I still believe that this is a reasonable choice.

He also has no use for or, apparently, comprehension of, some of my remarks on prepositions (he uses the word “gibberish” at one point), although I briefly discussed the rationale for including them on p. xix.  The problem with prepositions is that their meaning is typically vague (in the technical semantic sense),  highly dependent on context for their construal, and therefore dictionary entries of them tend to be long lists of contextual senses or translation equivalents.   I find this unsatisfactory, and I look with favor on semanticists who attempt to find some unity in the multiple uses of a preposition. Some do this by the identification of an invariate core, others by tracing the ramifications of metaphorical extension.  My brief characterizations of some of the prepositions in DQA were at least a gesture toward this semantic project, and an attempt to bring them into practical lexicographical use.  None of these issues are on Kaufman’s radar at all.

He also apparently did not read, or take to heart, my explanation of why Greek and Hebrew equivalents were included (p. xvii).  In no case are they used, or appealed to, as determining the sense of a particular word (except for rare words or problematic cases).  He believes, for some reason, that I translated דרתה in 4Q197 (Tobit) as “courtyard” simply because the LXX uses αὐλῆς for דרתה; and that context favors simply “house.”  But private houses at that time, even small ones, were typically built around a central courtyard through which entrance was gained; so that when Reuel is found sitting “before the gate of his courtyard” it means exactly the same as sitting “before the gate of his house.”  Presumably in later dialects (such as the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic appealed to by Kaufman) דרה came to denote “house” simpliciter via metonymy. But evidence is lacking to show that this was the case in QA.

Another case of Kaufman’s misconstrual of my purposes is also found in Tobit (4Q196), [ולא ]בר לה אחרן, which I translated as “he has no other child.”  Kaufman believes that I included the gloss “child of either sex” for בר with this citation, solely because the LXX translates it by τέκνον.  But this is not so.  In context (Tobit 3:15), Sara, Reuel’s daughter, is speaking, and she says, “I am the only child of my father; and besides me, he has no other  בר.” Since Sara is a female, she must be included in the wider meaning of בר.  This is clear without appeal to the Greek, and in fact I made no appeal to the Greek.  

Finally, I shall address Kaufman’s characterization of DQA as a whole, namely, that it is not an “academic lexicon” because it lacks “an indication of the vocalization and morphological structures of well-known words, lists of derived forms for verbs, or even a guide for students as to what words are common elsewhere in Aramaic and what are relatively or extremely rare.” This suggests that Kaufman has not fully understood the purpose of a specialized lexicon for a very small corpus such as QA, which contains only about 20,000 word tokens and about 1,500 word types. With such a small corpus, it is possible to include most of the occurrences in the entries, but it is not possible to provide, say, “lists of derived forms for verbs” because the occurrences of all but extremely common verbs are too few for such a list -- as pointed out on p. xix of the introduction that Kaufman ignores, where the question of vocalization is also addressed. With respect to “morphological structures,” I am not sure what Kaufman is referring to, or what information in addition to the headword, root, and exemplification might satisfy him.   As for the last point, I fail to see the purpose of providing a guide for what words are common or rare in other Aramaic dialects; DQA is not a textbook for introductory classes in Aramaic.

It should also be pointed out that the Qumran Aramaic corpus is different from other, larger, Aramaic corpora, in that each text in the corpus has been published in DJD with detailed notes and concordances,  collected and re-collected in a variety of anthological publications, and several have been the subject of encyclopedia articles, commentaries, and popular books. There are at least two book-length grammars of QA (by Schattner-Reiser and Muraoka), a separate printed concordance with full line references, and a variety of electronic publications, including CAL, which makes retrieval of all the data quite straightforward.  Therefore Kaufman’s complaint about the lack of “an index to cited passages” is captious in the extreme.  (The forthcoming electronic publication of DQA will also make such an index superfluous.)

As for the rest, it would be tiresome, and tiring, to register counter-comments to each of Kaufman’s comments, nor do all of them warrant opposition.  I shall limit myself to a few cases, especially those where, in my opinion, Kaufman has overlooked evidence or committed an egregious error.

For זעק, Kaufman says that the Aphel “makes no sense morphologically or semantically” and says it must be Pael; and yet in CAL s.v. zʿq the root appears only in the G, C (Aphel), Gt, and Ct stems. The root does not appear to be used in the D stem (Pael) at all in Aramaic.

In connection with a citation under the root חלם II, Kaufman says, “This reading and interpretation of לבר is impossible”; but he offers no reasons for this opinion and no alternative.  I would readily accept, by the way, an emendation of  המון to מנהון (in the phrase לבר המון) although it is drastic.

With regard to the entry חתף, Kaufman says, “But since when does a Qumran Aramaic imperfect express the general present as in SBH [Standard Biblical Hebrew]?” Well, two possible examples are in the Genesis Apocryphon: ‏כל בתולן וכלאן די יעלן לגנון לא ישפרן מנהא, “no virgins or brides who enter the bridal canopy are more beautiful than she” (20:6), although these could be construed as modals. But חדה לחדה ידבקון, “each clings to each” (11QtgJob 36:1-2) is an undeniable example of an imperfect used as a general present.

Kaufman’s note on יאש is to the point; if the opportunity arises for a second edition, I shall incorporate it.

Kaufman says “ ‘chastisement’ [יסור] elsewhere is always a plural form.” Always? Not in Tg. Jeremiah 30:14 יִסּוּר אַכְזְרָאִין, “chastisement of cruel men.” If Mishnaic Hebrew is relevant, then we also have אין ייסור גדול מזה (b. Sanh. 45a).

For נגד I and II, he says baldly, “This is a single root.”  I would like to see some justification for this, since prima facie there is no semantic connection between “pull, lengthen” and “scourge.”

For נחיר, Kaufman says the lemma should be plural or dual. In response, I can do no better than to cite CAL s.v. nḥyr: “normally in the pl. (originally: dual!), but with some major exceptions, especially in poetry.” In general, words for body-parts (such as יד or רגל) are not given dual forms in dictionary headwords, although in use they may be predominantly dual or plural. (This is also relevant for Kaufman’s remark on חלץ.)

For סגר, Kaufman says “it only acquires the connotation ‘to hand over’ when used with ביד.” And that is how it is used in the cited passage (1QGenAp 22:17)! Kaufman’s remark is inexplicable.

For the preposition על, Kaufman claims that English “over” can be used as a translation equivalent in “virtually” every case.  Really? For עלת על בתאנוש, for instance, what is better, “I came to Bitenosh” or “I came over Bitenosh” (1QGenAp 2:3)? This is a silly suggestion.

Kaufman makes the following remark: “קץ n. m. time; end: The examples of ‘end’ (קצוי) are from קצה not from קץ.” In DQA the forms קצוי are in fact booked under קצה, so Kaufman’s “correction” is to an entry that does not exist.

*Edited later to remove personal expressions of pique, which I regret.