Biblical Hebrew Forum

["A. Philip Brown II" <apbrown2 AT prodigy.net>]

Hi, Karl,

Syntagmatic relationship is the linguistic term for context, specifically
lexical-syntactical context. Knowing the possible roots could be called the
paradigmatic relationship that the root shares with other potential roots.

You say, "expected is that a student will know his Hebrew grammar."  (1)
Most don't. (2) The way grammars were written was by reading until patterns
were identified. (3) I think learning grammar apart from reading/seeing it
in context is not optimal, in fact, counter-productive to real learning.

As I Hebrew instructor I am constantly trying to mix the deductive and
inductive approaches. The book I am proposing is nothing more than a
contextually-nuanced, concise lexicon and the Hebrew text wedded in one
volume. It will facilitate precisely what students need to do most: read the
text.

To those on the list who regard the proposed project as unnecessary or
unlikely to succeed:

Thanks for your input.  I think it’s pretty clear that there are a good
number of competing pedagogical ideologies in Hebrew Language studies:
witness the recent spate of 1st & 2nd year Hebrew texts published in the
last 10 years.

As an avid BibleWorks user, I am well apprised of the value of electronic
tools and make daily use of them across the entire range of Biblical
languages. The proposed volume could never take the place of those tools.

Nonetheless, my own desire to be able to read devotionally in Hebrew
(without constantly mousing over each word I don’t know) in combination with
my desire to see my students soaking themselves in the text prompted the
project. I am confident that the work has a potential market. But obviously,
it is no panacea for all Hebrew learning woes, and I do not conceive of it
as such.

To those who do see potential value in the project as proposed:

Thanks for the encouragement and hopefully the publisher to whom it has been
submitted will as well.

Shalom to one and all,

Philip Brown

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Randolph [mailto:kwrandolph AT email.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 1:03 PM
To: A. Philip Brown II
Cc: b-hebrew
Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] A Reader's Hebrew Old Testament, pre-Masorete?

Philip:

It is the context more than any other factor which determines which root to
look at.

For example, I have a mild form of dyslexia. I now realize that as early as
first grade, I learned to read in context, thus was able to avoid most
problems associated with dyslexia (It was not diagnosed until after I
received my BA). If a sentence or phrase doesn't fit the context, I go back
and reread it, watching the letters change before my eyes. However tests,
which often lack such context, are a different matter.

Similarly, while reading the unpointed text, the context usually tells me
which root a lexeme is connected to. For example, in a passage mentioning
the transfer of title from one person to another, the sentence WYXL )T HBYT
I automatically read the verb as coming from the root NXL, only if that
doesn't make sense will I stop and take a closer look. But if he just built
the house and is just bringing it into common use, then the verb comes from
the root XLL "to make common" with derivative meanings of "to bring into
production", "to make use of" also "common" in contrast to "set apart"
(which we often translate as "holy") (watch out here, there are two
different roots connected with XLL, the second referring to boring, as in
piercing or wounding which is also used metaphorically). In short, I look
for good sentence structure which has the verb, subject and object that fit
in the context with correct syntax of the whole passage.

The problem that we run into as non-native speakers of Biblical Hebrew is
that we often don't recognize that a lexeme could stem from two or more
roots, we often don't know the roots, hence we will lock onto a root that
doesn't make sense. The Masoretes ran into the same problem: they were
non-native speakers of Biblical Hebrew who had a further difficulty in that
they were handed a tradition of reading that they were expected to preserve.
It is demonstrable that occasionally they were wrong as far as meaning is
concerned (though it is possible that we today read their points differently
than how they were originally intended), though on the whole they did a
really good job.

What I would like to see is a training tool that helps people read the text
as did the pre-Masoretes. To make this work, there are two things I see as
needed: 1) a dictionary that is very tight on its glosses, that makes no
attempt to help a translator make smooth copy in English nor any other
language and 2) when the student clicks on a lexeme, he is presented with
all the options, the same way as a pre-Masorete would have been. Expected is
that the student will know his Hebrew grammar and is prepared to make
sentence diagrams like what we had to do back in grade school.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "A. Philip Brown II" <apbrown2 AT prodigy.net>

>
> Hi, Karl,
>
> What you suspected is correct. The gloss options are based on the pointed
> text.  Your idea is an interesting one, though.  I suspect that the
> syntagmatic associations of any given Hebrew lexeme would have made the
> number of viable root options much smaller for a native Hebrew speaker
than
> for those of us coming in from the outside.
>
> Blessings,
> Philip
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karl Randolph [mailto:kwrandolph AT email.com]
>
> Philip:
>
> Just curious, does BibleWorks with the unpointed text use a tagged text,
or
> does it give the reader a list of options based on the form of the text?
>
> For example, YXL could be from XWL, XLH, XLL, YXL or NXL (if a verb) and
the
> context will indicate which meaning to use, or was the text tagged so that
> only the gloss the tagger thought correct pops up?
>
> Yours, Karl W. Randolph.
--