Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>]

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