Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Randall Buth wrote,


>yosef tucker katav:
>>What I would like is some guidance on what is the most important thing to
>>get across, as well as, any other pedagogical ideas.
>
>Most important:
>The system worked and little kids grew up and absorbed it by MAPPING real
>life experiences to it. The mapping is psychologically real, no one goes
>through complex analysis when using any language fluently.
>
>[[Analysis is done from outside a system. It is never finished, always in
>flux. Function and use take place inside a language system. That is why it
>works and communicates. Which means a little kid might use a suffix tense
>to refer to something that happened the day before, would think the signals
>sufficiently clear, and wouldn't understand a discussion about whether that
>was time or aspect or both.
>Personally, I can't see that Hebrew  structurally distinguished time from
>aspect, or aspect from time in its verb. (It's Greek and English that split
>them. In fact Greek systematized aspect throughout in ways that are
>dizzying from a Hebrew perspective. So Mishnaic Hebrew, after significant
>contact with Greek, had to develop the 'heve noten' imperative form "be
>giving".) ]]
>
>Second:
>I think you might be better off using something like Christo van der
>Merwe's new reference grammar, it is more digestible for the student, has a
>better grasp on the fluidity of language than WO, and refuses to fully
>split hairs that shouldn't be split.
>
>Pedagogical:
>Use of a language is the best way to learn a language. In the future, you
>might learn something of TPR, "total physical response". It is very
>efficient in language teaching.
>By day three or four you can hand a pomegranate to a student and say, "ten
>et ha-rimon el ha-baHur ha-ze". After the transaction you can point to the
>new person and with balancing handmotions say "hu natan lexa et ha-rimon
>vaata laqaHta oto. Then turn to a third student and ask "me `asiti?" or "me
>`asa ha-baHur ha-rishon?"  etc. etc. etc. As you see, it doesn't matter
>whether it is a tense, an aspect or both or neither. It communicates. And
>communication doesn't exclude the possibility of additional ways of
>communicating in the same situation. (Of course, you will need hundreds of
>situations and correct Biblical Hebrew for them. No one said there is no
>homework for the teacher. In Greek you will need to be even more careful so
>that you DOS instead of DIDOU above.)
>   Analysis comes later, is good, and in fact TPR can be fit into more than
>one analysis in any language, so proponents of different external theories
>need not fear. All analysis and metalanguage should be labelled as such.
>Words like "approximately" should liberally preface definitions and
>analyses in another language. That keeps a student open to the possibility
>that they will run into more and different kinds of examples and words and
>collocations. And they end up comfortable with quite abit of biblical
>Hebrew and open to learning more.
>
>Anyway, the above is a facet I see in successful language learning.
>


Dear Randall,


Your suggestions above are very fine for learning a living language, but
what about a dead one lacking informants? Your remarks regarding the
aquisition of language by kids are to the point, but how can we apply them
to a dead language?

English kids can be able to use participles an perfects correctly without
ever having having learned their grammatical names or definitions. The
reason is that by *experience inside a living language* they get concepts
in their minds which correspond to each fundamental linguistic unit, and
these concepts become more and more restricted (or clear) as they grow up.
Mature persons inside the same presupposition pool have about the same
concept corresponding to each fundamental term.

If we are no part of a particular presupposition pool (the culture,
experiences and views of a group speaking the same language) we cannot
learn a language by *nature's way*, and in that case we need, by the help
of our own language and presupposition pool, to define the fundamental
linguistic units of the other language. What the child learns by her daily
interaction with other speakers, we have to learn by a study of the
different ways a fundamental unit is used.

I therefore wonder what you mean when you write: "Personally, I can't see
that Hebrew  structurally distinguished time from aspect, or aspect from
time in its verb." Do you mean that Classical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew are
so close that all we have to do is to learn Modern Hebrew as a child does,
and voila, then we know Classical Hebrew, as well, without any need to
define anything inside Classical Hebrew? If not, could you please give a
definition of YIQTOL and QATAL (in Classical Hebrew) in terms that can be
used of an English speaker who wants to learn the language? If they don't
distinguish time and aspect, what is their distinction?



Regards

Rolf




Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo