Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 01.00 22/02/00 -0500, Peter Kirk wrote:
>Good point, Ian. I may not have given the "alone" its full force. On 
>the other hand, linguists cannot be expected to be cutting edge 
>historians as well, and should be allowed to present language-only 
>arguments. That is the point of the rest of my posting, which has been 
>carefully ignored.

Actually no, it hasn't been ignored. I was merely dealing with your
misplaced attack on NPL. However, as I understand the assumptions, the
position espoused doesn't seem to be correct.

If we are dealing with synchronic linguistics, a linguist may present
linguistic only arguments. Yet, if we are dealing with diachronic
linguistics, we need a manner to anchor the information into a historical
space. To deal with the various sources needed for a linguistic study one
needs the historical component.

The necessity to deal with aspects of history in this day and age requires
cross-discinplinary expertise: linguistic, iconographic,
epigraphic/philological, economic, archaeological, and whatever else is
seen as relevant. We can no longer afford single disciplinary analyses of
most matters from the past.


Ian

>>>This is what may happen when philologists enter a discussion about 
>>>language datings segments of language on the basis of language alone.
>
>The magic word is the last one: "alone".