[Lexicog] open eyes

[Ronald Moe]

I don’t remember ever hearing or reading the phrase “open eyes” used to mean
the healing of a blind person or the medical restoration of eyesight outside
of the Bible. Nor can I use my native speaker intuition to construct a
natural sentence using the expression with that meaning. The two corpuses
that I work with didn’t show up any examples either. The concordance entries
only revealed the meanings ‘to physically open one’s eyes’ and ‘to
understand something’. This latter usage is based on the conceptual metaphor
‘to see something is to understand it’. Other expressions based on this
conceptual metaphor are, “Try to see it from my perspective.” “He tried to
convince me, but I just couldn’t see it.” “That was a real eye-opener.”
Although the “open eyes” expression comes in a few varieties, it is usually
found in the frame “open (your/his/etc) eyes to (something, e.g. the
possibilities, the advantages).” This expression does not seem to be related
to the healing of blindness. However the conceptual metaphor enables us to
say, “He was blind to the possibilities.” I don’t see any antithesis in this
expression between “open/heal (your) eyes” and “be blind”. The antithesis is
between “see” and “not see”. So I conclude that when our English Bibles
translate the Hebraism “open the eyes of the blind”, they are translating
literally with a resultant unnatural rendering. I’ve gotten so used to the
expression, that it seems perfectly understandable to me (but not natural).
But since I’ve been reading the Bible for over 45 years, I’m not a good
judge of how the expression would communicate to the man on the street.

 

I don’t know the basis for the Hebrew idiom “open eyes”. But my research
indicates that idioms based on conceptual metaphors rarely have the same
meaning in two languages, even when the two languages have the same
conceptual metaphor and idioms based on it with the same identical wording
(e.g. see my paper on the conceptual metaphor ‘Time’ in English and Koine
Greek).

 

Ron Moe

 

   _____  

From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Wayne Leman
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 9:27 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Lexicog] open eyes

 

Thanks, Dick. Yes, native English speakers do use "open eyes" in the 
metaphorical sense you note. But per my original questions, does standard 
(natural) English(es) ever use "open eyes" in the ways that Joseph notes it 
used in the KJV, which is a literal translation of a Semiticism? I'm 
thinking that no native speaker of English uses "open eyes" to refer to eyes

being restored, other than in the case of the loan translation found in 
English Bibles translated from Biblical Hebrew and Semiticisms in 
Hellenistic Greek. But I'm not sure. That's why I need to ask.

Wayne
-----
Wayne Leman
Cheyenne dictionary online:
HYPERLINK "http://cheyenne.110mb.com"http://cheyenne.-110mb.com

>Wayne Leman wrote:
> Is the collocation "open eyes" ever used in any standard dialect of 
> English
> for a meaning other than 'to open one's eyelids" (e.g. upon waking up from
> sleep)?
>
> I am particularly interested to know if a literal translation of the
> Hebraism "open eyes", meaning 'regain eyesight', is ever used in any
> standard dialect of English?
> Wayne,
Hi Wayne,
I really had my eyes opened on that topic--(not that I was blind to it, but)

I just hadn't thought that much about it.
Dick

 


No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.19/1256 - Release Date: 2/2/2008
1:50 PM



No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition. 
Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.19/1256 - Release Date: 2/2/2008
1:50 PM
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lexicography/attachments/20080204/de25100a/attachment.htm>