Rabbi Yoshiya and Natural Language
Also, hypernyms
In my column this past week, I first discussed hypernyms, and how it relates to the daf. I am familiar with the concept from WordNet, which is a lexical database of words and the semantic relationships between them.
Examples of such relations include (cannibalizing from Wikipedia’s writeup):
hypernyms: Y is a hypernym of X if every X is a (kind of) Y (canine is a hypernym of dog)
hyponyms: Y is a hyponym of X if every Y is a (kind of) X (dog is a hyponym of canine)
coordinate terms: Y is a coordinate term of X if X and Y share a hypernym (wolf is a coordinate term of dog, and dog is a coordinate term of wolf)
meronym: Y is a meronym of X if Y is a part of X (window is a meronym of building)
holonym: Y is a holonym of X if X is a part of Y (building is a holonym of window)
It seems to me that such precision in describing words and their relationship is essential to discussing Nedarim, so we should learn this vocabulary.
Case in point is Nedarim 49. If one vows against mevushal, cooked foods, what about tzali, roasted foods? It isn’t just that mevushal and tzali, as types of preparing food via heat, are coordinate terms. In addition, in certain contexts it seems that mevushal is the hypernym of tzali.
And I believe that is at play in the Mishnah that mevushal does not encompass tzali, and the brayta where Rabbi Yoshiya’s position is recorded, that it does encompass tzali.
There’s more, but before proceeding, let us link to the full column.
Some other salient ideas from the rest of the column, summarized briefly. The gemara first suggests the dispute regarding whether tzali is encompassed or not is based on whether Biblical language or natural human language governs vows. This is indeed the conclusion of the Yerushalmi, and possibly explicitly in their quotes. In Bavli, they don’t firmly commit to this explanation, instead suggesting that locales differ in their speech, and thus what it included in mevushal. In the column, I explore what Rabbi Yoshiya’s locale could be.
I also note Rabbi Yoshiya is a student of Rabbi Yishmael, while the Mishnah is from students of Rabbi Akiva. The famous dispute between Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva is whether the Biblical text is written in natural language (so that, for instance, repetition isn’t significant.) If Rabbi Yoshiya follows Rabbi Yishmael that it follows לשון בני אדם, then might we draw a connection to the present dispute? Since Biblical speech is human speech, Biblical prooftext can be used to establish the לשון בני אדם intent when vowing.