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b-hebrew - [b-hebrew] Re: from lamo to logograms

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Vadim Cherny <vadim_lv AT center-tv.net>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Re: from lamo to logograms
  • Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 13:20:13 +0000

On 22/12/2004 12:43, Vadim Cherny wrote:

(in the first part, quoting me, Peter Kirk, without attribution)

It is indeed quite likely that sometime in the misty prehistory of the
Afro-Asiatic languages, before the split between Semitic, Berber and
Egyptian (for these groups share the triliteral root structure), many
roots were composed from some kind of biliteral root plus a suffix
giving a more precise semantic - perhaps much as Greek, Latin, Russian
verbs etc are commonly made up of an often monosyllabic root with a
prefix giving a more precise semantic.


What makes the third radical in, say, pr-derived roots a suffix? Suffix is
something employed across the words with the same meaning. ...


Not necessarily. In Russian, the various verbal prefixes have up to seven distinct meanings, according to Terence Wade's "A Comprehensive Russian Grammar".

... But the same
radical in pr and nsh roots hardly relates exactly the same meaning. Third
radicals are no suffixes. ...


It would be an interesting study to see if there are any semantic regularities in third radicals. But there is probably not enough remaining evidence to decide this question.

... Besides, if they were suffixes, a highly developed morphological device,
then the addition was deliberate. ...


Well, this depends what you mean by "deliberate". Yes, it was the conscious act of some human to coin a new root and suffix combination. But it is highly unlikely that there was some plan by an influential individual or committee to introduce a set of suffixed words. Such things just didn't happen in the Stone Age, to which these changes must be dated.

... In any case, the Semitic morphology is
quite beyond the cavemen and cavewomen. To me, the language seems slowly
adapted to the people, from picto- to logograms to alphabet.


This is based on a complete misunderstanding of linguistic history. For one thing, we are not talking about writing, but about changes in spoken language, which must predate writing as they predate the split between the world's oldest written languages, Egyptian and Akkadian. But it is demonstrably untrue that complex morphology is not used by primitive peoples. On the contrary, the most morphologically complex languages in the world are spoken by primitive pre-literate tribes in the Amazon, who were living in a Stone Age culture until very recent contact with westerners.

The logograms demonstrate that people knew the words before they knew
letters (alphabet). But in the root system, they had to know the letters
first in order to compose the roots and words. ...


This is simply untrue. It is demonstrable from all over the world that peoples are able to develop and speak complex languages without conceptualising the division of words into individual letters. In preliterate societies there is usually no concept that words are made up of individual segments which can be represented by letters - but these people are still able to speak, and speak very complex languages which have never been written.

... How could anyone explain this
on the natural-language grounds?

Vadim Cherny



--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/






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