Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Blau's explanation for how ultimate stress became inHebrew

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Blau's explanation for how ultimate stress became inHebrew
  • Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2010 08:01:07 +0200



Karl:


***
One can’t observe mental operations, not even among modern people.
Science, of which linguistics is part, is not a mere cataloguing a list of isolated observations, rather it includes recognizing patterns within those observations. In linguistics, those patterns include recognizing nouns, verbs, declensions, etc. Syntax and grammar are complex patterns, but observable.
***
I agree that "words" and morphemes can be sorted out in different categories. All speakers do that either implicitly or explicitly.
I seriously disagree that syntax and grammar are observable: they are mostly complete artefacts based on the "Western" tradition.
The Chinese never bothered about grammar and they are still not convinced it has any real use (at least in their language).
They just had it that some words are main words and some others are empty (=grammatical) words.

I'm still fairly unconvinced by your example with Proverbs. I cannot determine how much of your analysis is really in the document and how much is due to you applying your grid upon that line.
A.
***



My problem is not with speculation per se, because speculation can often help us recognize patterns, but it becomes a problem when it is elevated to be equal with observation or even superior thereto, when it could very well be wrong.
***
To be frank, this strikes me as being very "naive" and somewhat sounding like 19th century Positivism.
I very seriously doubt that there exists something like a "non theoretical" or "pre-theoretical" observation.
In addition most advances in sciences like physics result from modelizations that have been *afterwards* confirmed or infirmed.
I do not believe in that kind of ultra-empirical "bottom-up" theory of knowledge.
Relativity Theory typically deconstructs the concepts of space, time and matter, that were a kind of untouchable given.
It took centuries just to invent the concept of force, which seems "obvious", and to draw it with an arrow.

Arnaud Fournet







Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page