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The rod and the crocodile. Temporal relations in textual hermeneutics: An application of Petri nets to semantics
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Ephraim Nissan
Published/Copyright:
March 22, 2011
Abstract
We use a graphic formalism to make explicit differences in the interpretation of temporal relations in natural-language text. Out of the panoply of computational representation methods for time or tense, we select Petri nets, and discuss why. We illustrate their potential for semantics and for sign theorists, by analyzing how some late antique and medieval exegeses understood the narrative of Moses and Pharaoh's magicians, and the former's rod swallowing up the rods of the other ones, once these rods had been turned into crocodiles or snakes. We extend the treatment to another situation concerning the semantics of eating and being eaten.
Published Online: 2011-03-22
Published in Print: 2011-April
© 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
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Keywords for this article
temporal relations;
textual hermeneutics;
biblical exegesis;
formalism;
Petri nets
Articles in the same Issue
- Nigerian dress as a symbolic language
- Language and brain: Recasting meaning in the definition of human language
- An exploration of the other side of semantic communication: How the spontaneous movements of the human hand add crucial meaning to narrative
- Rethinking gesture phases: Articulatory features of gestural movement?
- Peirce's 10, 28, and 66 sign-types: The simplest mathematics
- Qualitative-quantitative analysis of narrative structures: The narrative roles of immigrants in Spanish television series
- Rethinking our understanding of diagrams
- Old and new covenants: Historical and theological contexts in Scribe's and Halévy's La Juive
- The rod and the crocodile. Temporal relations in textual hermeneutics: An application of Petri nets to semantics
- Transcendence and alterity: On life, communication, and subjectivity
- Analyzing discourse topics and topic keywords
- The fate of semiotics in China
- Victoria Welby and the Signific Movement
