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  • From: "Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>
  • To: <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Language Evolution
  • Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 08:49:14 +0100

Historic sources which directly explain the origin of the diversity of
languages we see today are scarce but many countires and cultures of
the world share versions of ancient stories. e.g. The story of people and
animals surviving a cataclysmic flood in a boat seems to exist in every
country, in one form or another, the whole world over. Ignoring the issue
of historicity of the tale (be it legend or be it true) this seems to
suggest to me that the whole human family shares a common history and at
one time shared a common language at some point after some form of cataclysm
that involved large quantities of water.

On a side thought, as the word 'arets' can mean land, it is possible that
the reference to 'all the land' being covered with water refers to a
localised
region where mankind was limited to.

Anyway, on with the linguistics! These factors seem to suggest that the idea
of a community centered around a citadel with a common language as presented
in the account of the tower of Babel seems reasonable from both a faith
perspective and from a historical perspective. The bible tells us that Yah
himself confused the languages (I believe this to be true). The historians
may prefer to believe that the growing populace evolved new languages as
they were now more spread out with no unifying linguistic standard.

All languages can be grouped into families and it is evident that these
families
had a beginning in the form of an orignal language. e.g. Italian, Spanish,
French,
Romanian, Ladino can be traced back to Latin as the subfamily head.
Norwegian, Dutch,
Swedish, German, Austrian, parts of English, Danish, Icelandic can be traced
back to an ancient
germanic language. Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czec etc, have Syrillic
origins.
Mandarin, Cantonese, Japonese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese have a common root. The
native
African languages. The semitic languages. The native Americas etc.

Going further back in time we see that these subfamily heads, such as latin
and
ancient Greek had more archaic linguistic family heads.

It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that, for whatever reason, the
major
linguistic families had there beginnings in some common place (e.g. babel and
its surroundings) and that through migration these languages spread into the
world
in their different directions, african languages moving south,
Chinese/Japanes family
moving East (way East!), Latin/Greek moving west, Norse moving North-West,
Syrillic
moving North-East and the Semitic languages continuing to dominate the ANE.
Therefore, what we loosely refer to as 'proto-semitic' must be the original
Semitic language that existed in Babel before the mass migrations started.

One lesson we can learn is from modern language evolution. Let's consider the
evolution
of the Italian language. There is no doubt the Italian language as it stands
today is
very different from its Latin predecessor e.g. no cases/declensions in modern
Italian.
Anybody familiar with the language of Dante's Inferno can see that over 95%
of the
language used in it is still in use on the streets of Florence today. So from
the
first century to the 14th century the language undergoes a complete facelift,
but
in the last 700 years the language has remained relatively static. Why?
Standardisation!
The standardisation of the language has had such a negative impact on its
natural
evolution that the language has almost stopped evolving. A contemporary
example
of this is the Italian subjunctive. The subjunctive is uneccesary for
communication and
as such there is a large force from the younger generations to drop this
feature of
the language. Yet it won't go away! Why? Because the pressure of a
standardised language
won't allow it to. Children who refuse to use it are castigated and made an
example to
the rest of the class. Refuse to use it an essay and you will not graduate.
Simple as that.

Now examining the hebrew language we see a similar phenomenon. In the many
centuries it
which it was (allegedley) composed we see very little evolution. Yes! We see
that there is
a semantic shift in the use of the root $bd (to serve => to worship
religiously) and a
broadening of the usages of the word torah. But other than these few examples
and a few
more the languages remains fairly static. Why? Standardisation! The whole way
of life was
based on a legal/ritualistic/religious corpus which was to be faithfully
copied to the
letter. Annual/monthly/weekly/daily teaching from this corpus 'froze' the
language. Therefore,
it is not unreasonable to assume that the hebrew at the time of the exodus
(1513) was very
similar to the hebrew of the time of the destruction of Jerusalem (607),
after almost a
millenium of static usage. This leaves 500 years before Mose' when the
language was free
to evolve.

Linguistically, a lot can happen in 500 years, and it is anybody's guess how
far away from
b-hebrew the original semitic language was.

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> My analysis of the YIQTOLs (including the percentage of the total number
> of YIQTOLs) is as follows:
>
> Past (including 5 examples of pre-past "pluperfect"): 1,027 7.5%
> Present: 2,461 18.1%
> Future: 4,841 35.5%
> Modal: 5,117 37.6%
> Present completed ("perfect"): 173 1.3%

Very convenient. Translate as you like. Take it for historical narration or
prophecy, as you wish.
That logic should be extended to nouns and roots.
Is there a language where a very specific form of a verb could mean just
anything, according to translator's exegetical needs?
That one-fifth of all yiqtols is present reference, I found that
particularly unbelievable. Rolf is welcome to demonstrate that on any
chapter.

> I argue that in most cases when a YIQTOL has past reference, the reason
> for its use rather than a WAYYIQTOL, is that some word element precedes
> the YIQTOL.

This is just funny: no semantical difference between yiqtol and wayiqtol.

Vadim Cherny





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