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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Isaac Fried's Theory (was Karl's lexicon)

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  • From: "JAMES CHRISTIAN READ" <JCR128 AT student.anglia.ac.uk>
  • To: if AT math.bu.edu
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Isaac Fried's Theory (was Karl's lexicon)
  • Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:45:58 +0100


IF: I am hastening to say that Steven Pinker is not a scientologist.

JCR: Ok! I did a quick search on the internet and
didn't find anything proclaiming him to be one but I
didn't want to make an issue out of it but opted to
remain on course with the linguistic discussion.

IF: I said that his theories appear to me to be scientological in nature.

JCR: This is probably going a little bit off topic but
what correlation do you see between proving that
language acquisition is a hard wired human instinct
(like spinning a web is for spiders) and scientological
views?

IF: Language (vocabulary+grammar) is transmitted to us through the
generations.

JCR: Vocabulary is transmitted. Grammar is induced by
process of generalisation. Did you know that not so
long ago 'abide' was an 'irregular' verb in English with past tense of
'abode'? By failing to transmit this item of vocabulary our processes of
generalisation
take over and our hard wired instincts therefore tell
us that the past tense of 'abide' is 'abided'. How did
this happen? Because the verb became less common and
so children were not exposed to its 'irregular' (at
some point in the history of the English language the
rule for forming the past tense of this verb was
regular) form and thus had to rely on their hard wired
mechanisms of generalisation to form the past tense of
the verb, the very same mechanisms which caused us all
to make the 'mistake' of saying 'goed' instead of
'went' when we were getting to grips with the accepted
protocol of communication that we affectionately refer
to as English. Thus with every generation grammar is
induced by generalisation and not specifically
handed down. What is handed down is a few examples of
'correct' language and a few exceptions to the generic
rules that *we make for ourselves*.

Vocabulary, is also invented, in every generation. Your
theory should account for this. If the Hebrews, as you
have suggested, merely received their vocabulary and
did not need to worry about the elements of their roots
that you suggest, just what method did they use for
inventing new words without creating exceptions?

IF: All I am interested in is the structure of Hebrew words such as
$AMARNU. Do you agree with what I have said about its composition?

JCR: Actually, I would go a step further than you. As
I have stated in the past, my research has led me to
believe the key to understanding languages, what is
truly universal to all languages, is the mechanisms of
our cognitive system upon the foundation of which
language is built. At the very centre of that system is
the cognition of objects and all words in a sentence,
according to my model all words modify the objects they
are associated with.

I would, therefore, not state that the verb 'to guard'
is modified by the personal pronoun 'we'. I would say
that the personal pronoun 'we' is being modified by
the affix which describes the completed action of
'guarding' to produce a 'word' (more precisely a
phonetic sequence, I take issue with the conventional
definition of words) which conjures up cognitive
understanding of the speaker and other/s (cognitive
understanding of who the others were or may have been
would be supplied by context and hence the power of
n-grams) having guarded X (where X is a variable that
refers to any of a list of things that can be guarded).

Just in case you are interested, I view language as a
sequence of phonemes and pauses. Shamarnu has very
little meaning on its own but in a real phonetic string
becomes far more meaningful. I, therefore, take issue
with the conventional definition of 'words' which is
quite arbitrary. What makes shamarnu a 'word' but not
'nu' other than arbitrary convention? Thus my model of
language, which you are free to view as completely
ridiculous, the following are all 'words' with slightly
different meanings:

i) Iwenttotheshop
ii) Hewenttotheshop
iii) Hewentothezoo
iv) Shewenttothezoo
v) Shewenttothemarket
vi) Theywenttothemarket

I know it may be a little uncomfortable at first to
read this unconventional way of presenting language but
this is the way you hear these phrases - as one
continuous string of phonemes. It is merely by
convention that we say that 'weguarded' is two 'words'
in English but 'shamarnu' is one 'word' in Hebrew. To
me 'shamarnu' is as meaningless in Hebrew as 'we
guarded' is in English. Any one hearing such a
statement would immediately wonder 'Who is the we?' and
'What did they guard?'. All that we understand by such
an utterance is that it can be used in more meaningful
utterances like:

i) We guarded the temple all night
ii) We guarded the gold for you, sir

So, if you are willing to accept my model of utterances
you will see that the individual elements which are
understood by our cognitive system are the objects
involved, what they are doing and when. Of course,
whether you model the elements as 'words' or 'affixes'
is really irrelevant to the point being made. Such is,
after all, merely convention.

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James Christian Read - BSc Computer Science
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew - thesis1: concept driven machine
translation using the Aleppo codex
http://www.lamie.org/lad-sim.doc - thesis2: language acquisition simulation

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f/www.lamie.org/lad-sim.doc - thesis2: language acquisition simulation

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