Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ken Penner" <pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca>]

I am seeking feedback on a paper entitled "Toward a Method of Tagging Hebrew
Tense, Aspect, and Mood." http://s91279732.onlinehome.us/thesis/TMA.pdf

Those of you who have been following my dissertation research know that I
propose that the prototypical feature set of the basic verb forms may be
discovered using an empirical method of statistical correlation between
formal features and semantic function:

"A major pitfall has plagued past studies of the Hebrew verbal system,
namely the lack of reproducible statistics supporting alleged correlations
between form and meaning. Today's computational technology offers a
solution: to produce a computer database of all the verbs in the corpus,
tagged for both formal and semantic features. In order to yield the required
correlations, such a computer database of the verbs in a corpus must be
tagged for indicators such as morphology, lexis, and syntax on one hand, and
semantic values such as time reference, aspect, and modality on the other.
One may then determine the strength of an association between each form and
each function by correlating the semantic values with the forms and
positions of the verbs."

Ken Penner, M.C.S. (Regent College), M.A. (McMaster)
Ph.D. (cand.), Religious Studies, 
Biblical Field (Early Judaism major)
McMaster University
Hamilton, Canada
pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca
Vocabulary Memorisation Software: 
http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/westerholm/flash or http://sensoft.nav.to