Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
> 
> On 9/21/05, Karl Randolph wrote:
> > Yitzhak:
> >
> > I don't know why you are putting so much effort to trying to
> > convince me that your reading of language development
> > is correct, if not to validate to yourself because of your own
> > self doubts. I am not trying to convince you that mine is
> > correct, just claiming that the surviving data is too sparse
> > to say.
> 
> You can rest assured that I have no self doubts.  That is, I
> can recognize that Dr. Steiner's method is a much more
> systematic and measured one -- having to reconstruct exact
> minimal pairs in order to prove not just that the two phonemes
> existed but that they were serving independently in the
> language and the independence is what minimal pairs is out
> to prove.  But the difference between reconstruction of g' and (
> versus reconstruction of th, $, t, &, and s, is different (But I
> guess 20 minimal pairs have to be produced for these, altogether).
> In any case, you've stated in the past, in the context of the
> XSD thread that very few people reacted when you suggested
> one of the related theories and you took that as a sign that
> you're right.  So, I have a feeling that since every time people
> stop responding to your claims on this issue, you think this
> issue is some kind of "undecidable from evidence" claim,
> and it's not.  It's just that you are too stubborn to even
> look at the evidence.
> 
So base pairs is the foundation? That weakens your 
argument even further.

First and foremost, human use of language is highly 
unpredictable. Coupled with that is that when sounds shift 
in languages, they almost never shift uniformly: some 
words retain the old pronunciation, some the new, and 
there is no way to predict which will be which. Further, 
patterns picked up from another language, a closely 
related cognate language being more influential that a 
foreign language, can influence that shift and the pattern 
that it follows. And if the language is not a natively spoken 
language, e.g. medieval Latin, the more likely the 
pronunciation shift will follow patterns found in related, 
natively spoken languages, e.g. "c" before "i" or "e" 
pronounced as an "s" from French into Latin.

While there is evidence (with which not everyone agrees) 
that Hebrew ceased to be a natively spoken language 
during the Babylonian Captivity or at the latest a 
generation of two thereafter, there is no question that 
Daniel, writing during the Captivity or very shortly 
thereafter, and later Ezra, expected Jews to know and 
understand Aramaic. Right there there is a pattern 
(Aramaic influence) on a non-natively spoken language 
(or one where native speakers formed a minority among 
the total population), a situation ripe for a pronunciation 
change that mimics base pair changes without the base 
pairs being present in the originating language.

Without taking into account the socio-linguistic milieu of 
post Captivity Judea, a mere statistical analysis can give a 
false positive for a pattern that historically didn't exist. 
That's why I called it GIGO.

> > Take for example, when did Aramaic and Hebrew split? If
> > we take Biblical dates, that was when Jacob left his father-
> > in-law Laban at about 1800 BC, give or take a century. In
> > other words, from then to Biblical Aramaic, we have a
> > separation of about a thousand years, plenty of time for
> > extensive language shift in both Hebrew and Aramaic.
> 
> Why, why, why do you keep trying to drive the discussion
> back to this issue?  Dr. Steiner respects the bible no less
> than you and yet proceeds to use normative linguistic
> theory for his reconstructions.  In any case, if you read
> the Bible literally, it would suggest that the split happened
> before this period.  But that a split of some kind happened
> before this period doesn't mean that the different phonemes
> didn't survive for a long time.  From evidence in New Kingdom
> Egyptian loan words, there appears to be a constant
> differentiation between th and $.  In the Execration Texts,
> dated to the 20th-18th centuries, Ashqelon [from th-q-l,
> weigh] appears with an s', and Ashterot [from (-th-t-r] appears
> with an s, while Beth-Shemesh and Jerusalem, appear with
> an $.  This type of s/s' - $ difference is pretty consistent also in
> other roots that are traceable to th - $ respectively.  The Torah
> itself contains clearly only Ashterot, but also mentions Shalem
> which is traditionally taken to be Jerusalem.  Joshua mentions
> all of these, and also Ak$ap.
> 
> > Further, when was the alphabet invented and used for
> > Semitic languages? The earliest examples I have seen
> > claimed in the literature is from about the same time
> > period.
> 
> What does it matter what you have seen when you choose
> to selectively look at the evidence?
> 
For years I have been interested in what are the earliest 
examples of alphabetic writing that can be connected to 
recognizably Hebrew writing. The oldest, and then only a 
possible hit, was from a news article a few months back. I 
don't consider that being selective. Rather I look at it as 
being the opposite, not enough data. Data from centuries, 
even millennia later, I view as inconclusive. Possibly 
misleading.

> > Alphabetic use could have been in existence for
> > centuries, or was new. Do we have indications from that
> > period as to how many letters it had at that time?
> 
> Epigraphic South Arabic uses 29 letters that are an
> independent and earlier divergence from Proto-Canaanite
> than the Hebrew/Phoenician/Aramaic one.  Some of the
> additional Proto-Canaanite alphabet letters can be clearly
> related to the ones in ESA.   So yes.
> 
Doesn't answer my question for Hebrew.

> > How many extensive writings from that period remain that
> > are recognizably Aramaic or Hebrew?
> 
> If you could prove to me that the Torah is written in Hebrew,
> and not in Aramaic or Phoenician, then we can discuss this.
> 
In other words, none.

> > Can we build a time
> > line from that period to the Biblical usage from that era?
> 
> Generally, yes.  It really depends on what you mean by time
> line and what you mean by Biblical usage.
> 
In other words, no.

> > If the answers to this paragraph are "Don't know" "Don't
> > know" "None" and "No", who has the hubris to claim to be
> > able to "prove" language development from that period?
> 
> Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with evidence before
> firing questions at random.  Various evidence at different
> times generally allows us to place in relative context when
> various phonemes merged.
> 
How about phonemes diverging or being introduced? By 
considering only merged is rather selective.

> > Now assuming that ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and other
> > Semitic languages acted the same as do more modern
> > languages, we find even more reasons not to be able to
> > state categorically how ancient Aramaic and Hebrew
> > developed.
> 
> You tend to assume a lot, and you know what that brings
> about.  If you assume, at least do it *after* you've examined
> the evidence.
> 
You have yet to show any evidence other than that based 
on theory.

> > Take just the example of Latin, a language for
> > which we have historical records: its spelling became
> > frozen so that even when pronunciation changes occurred
> > they did not show up in the written record until later, and
> > then as new spellings in Spanish, French, Italian and
> > other Romance languages. Yet even then, medieval to
> > modern pronunciation of Latin is more based on French
> > and Spanish pronunciation than the original Roman one.
> > In particular, the letter "c", which used to be consistently a
> > "k" sound, now is given a "s" pronunciation before "e" and
> > "i", though there are other examples as well. But when the
> > spelling is allowed to change, then letters tend not to
> > change their values, as when the German Stratte became
> > Strasse or the Greek thallattes became thallasses.
> 
> This is essentially how Dr. Steiner suggests g' might have
> evolved, by proximity to the trill r.  However, the shift of c
> to s did not create a new phoneme.  The /s/ phoneme
> already existed.
> 
Had the shift been influenced by modern Italian instead of 
medieval French, the pronunciation shift could have 
introduced a new phoneme. That's part of the 
unpredictability of language change.

> > Again assuming that ancient Hebrew acted the same as
> > more modern languages, as languages first adopt an
> > alphabet, as long as the writings remain short on the order
> > of graffiti, an ill fitting match is often tolerated. But once
> > legal documents are written in the language, such as
> > business contracts or extensive religious texts, people will
> > either use a well attested other language (as did the
> > Chinese (whose legal language no one spoke before the
> > adoption of Mandarin as the legal language), medieval
> > Europeans Latin or the example you linked to of the early
> > Arabs using Aramaic) or to avoid confusion they adjust the
> > alphabet by subtracting and adding graphemes to match
> > the language.
> 
> So if someone was to show that as late as 100 BCE,
> when legal texts and contracts and religious texts were
> written in Hebrew, the phonemes of h_ and h. were still
> differentiated, would that prove it to you?
> 
Nope, for reasons given above.

> Also, Are you calling the inscription from Tell Fekherye a
> "grafitti"? It is both a legal and religious document.
> 
I could give a long answer, but it ain't worth it.

> > Therefore, unless you can prove that the
> > early Hebrews were using an ill fitting alphabet when
> > Moses wrote Torah in the 15th century BC, you cannot
> > rule out the historically attested to pattern from other
> > languages indicating that the 22 graphemes represented
> > the 22 consonantal lexemes recognized by the ancient
> > Hebrews.
> 
> Don't the above examples regarding place names in the
> Execration Texts prove this?  Would place names in
> Thutmose III's list be sufficient? He's usually dated to the
> early 15th century.  What would prove it to you?
> 
Nope. Translation from another though cognate language 
into a third, unrelated language, does not tell how Hebrew 
pronounced these names.

> > One area where we take almost the opposite tacks is in
> > the use of cognate languages: I take the view that while
> > cognate languages can sometimes, in rare cases, clear
> > up something that is otherwise unclear in a language,
> > most of the time a study of cognate languages will add
> > nothing to the understanding of a language, many times
> > actually confuse the issue and/or give misleading
> > information, therefore the use of data from cognate
> > languages should be done with extreme caution;
> 
> You don't "take the view."  You make the assumption.  You
> don't view the facts unbiased and let the facts point you
> towards which view is correct.  You don't even want to look
> at the facts.  That's what this paragraph of yours is all about.
> 
> > you, OTOH, seem to take the position that if something is
> > attested to in a cognate language, it must also be found in
> > Biblical Hebrew as well,
> 
> No, I don't.
> 
> > If we had native speakers to
> > interview, we could ignore the cognate languages entirely
> > as the cognates would be extra noise to filter out. The
> > main use I see for cognate languages is where
> > documents written in them explain concepts or lexemes
> > rarely used in Hebrew and where the use in Hebrew does
> > not indicate its meaning. Hence I tend to ignore the
> > cognate languages as irrelevant (most of the time), while
> > you consider their study indispensable.
> >
> > Seeing as I have a major philosophic difference from you
> > as to the validity of cognate language study, unless I
> > changed my philosophy, even an extensive study of the
> > materials you insist on will not change my mind.
> 
> First, you shouldn't mock raising people from the dead.
> That belief is no less important than Sinaitic authorship
> of the Torah, which you seem to hold highly.  But while
> we may not be able to raise people from the dead to
> check our assumptions, we can check the very last
> assumption you made.  And it's all up to you.  And you're
> still alive, I hope!  So look at the evidence, and see if you
> change your mind!
> 
> > The only
> > thing that will make me accept your theory is for you to
> > produce extensive alphabetic documents dating from
> > about the time of Jacob and Laban, showing the
> > development of the alphabet as well as both Aramaic and
> > Hebrew from then to Moses,  Since you, by your own
> > admission, start with the DSS,.......
> 
> I don't start with the DSS.  That's misreading what I said.
> What I said is that I don't ignore any part of the evidence
> from any time period.  You ignore a large portion of evidence
> from the Massoretic period and completely refuse to look
> at much earlier evidence.
> 
> > Look at the validity of data from cognate languages: if that
> > data is to be used only sparingly and with extreme
> > caution, willy nilly throwing in such data is GI.
> 
> That cognate languages can allow us to reconstruct phonemes
> that merged in later languages is an observable fact in modern
> languages today. But you cannot claim I'm "willy nilly throwing
> in data" until you're able to examine the data yourself to be
> able to know, yourself, what is cautious use of the data.
> 
> > > Arabic isn't a form of North Semitic.  If you can't verify facts from 
> > > the
> > > wikipedia yourself, don't quote randomly from it.  Wikipedia is a handy
> > > resource, but because it is not edited nor monitored by those with
> > > expertise on the subject, you should verify everything you read there.
> > >
> > That's handy of you, first you link to an article, but the
> > moment that it disagrees with your theories, you diss
> > it. What consistency.
> 
> Wikipedia is a constantly dynamic resource.  It's great for getting facts
> that are true up to the last minute.  It's also great for getting the latest
> rumors and hoaxes that are believed up to the last minute.  To create a
> hard link to the current version is something that is rather complex to
> do, and so if I give you a link, it can be changed one minute after.  No
> one stands behind the information, no one stands behind checking
> and verifying the information, no one stands behind maintaining the
> information.  I know nothing of the people who edited the article and
> what they have contributed before to the subject and what they know
> of the subject.  So long as there's no one who stands behind information
> then definitely it's you who has to do the checking to make sure the
> information is dependable.  It is a handy online resource for repository
> of facts.  But you must check them yourself.  I do.  It gives me many
> times a great place to start in looking up topics related to some
> subject.  But I check each fact.  You should too.
> 
> > > Yes, Arabic is not North Semitic.  "North Semitic people"
> > > (whatever that means) can speak Arabic.  But that doesn't
> > > make the language North Semitic.
> > >
> > Again, according to the article, the reason that Arabic
> > today is not north Semitic is the result of migration.
> > Therefore the similarities between it and Ugaritic can be
> > attributed to a common origin not necessarily shared by
> > Hebrew or even Aramaic.
> 
> The reason that Arabic today is not North Semitic is because
> Arabic is classified as South Semitic.  That classification is
> not a result of migration of people.  It's a result of the relations
> between the languages.  Migration of people is a suggestion
> that comes after the classification is made and which may be
> independently supported.
> 
So classification alone is sufficient reason to ignore 
history?

To me that sounds like saying that English is an American 
language as the United States is the largest English 
speaking country in the world and most influential today in 
spreading English usage in the rest of the world; ignoring 
history that shows that a small island off Europe deserves 
the blame instead.

Similarly, migration is sufficient reason to find similarities 
in Ugaritic and Arabic without positing a pan-Semitic 
linguistic pattern.

I may be oversimplifying your case here.

> > > > > You're the one assuming that each root must be uniquely
> > > > > represented graphically.
> > > >
> > > > Excuse me, where did I make that claime?
> > >
> > > Sorry, I meant the other way around.  Each unique set of
> > > graphemes that make up a root uniquely represents one
> > > root.  That is an assumption of yours.
> >
> > Excuse me, and where did I make that claim?
> >
> > If you can't even reproduce my position accurately, how can
> > you critique it?
> 
> https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew/attachments/20050825/2b0b6f49/attachment.bat
> "I started with the assumption that I would be able to find one and one
> only distinct meaning per lexeme".  I'm not sure if you've defined
> lexemes before but you've treated a set of graphemes that
> represents a root as a lexeme.  The above "represents one root"
> is equivalent (and refers) to your "one and only distinct meaning".
> 
I almost hate to say this, but a "lexeme", as defined by the 
Oxford American Dictionary included with Mac OS X 10.4 
has the same definition as was given in the linguistics 
classes I studied in college, as a lexical unit of a 
language, consisting of one word or several words, 
considered as an abstract unit. There is nothing in that 
definition about graphemes, nor in my use of the term.

There is nothing in that definition that claims that the 
vocalization of "too" in English is anything other than three 
different lexemes, which, if English were written 
phonetically, would have the same grapheme. As it is, that 
vocalization has three graphemes to indicate the at least 
three lexemes that it represents. I have never claimed that 
Biblical Hebrew acted differently from modern languages, 
in fact the reason I claim that each lexeme has one basic 
meaning is based on my knowledge of modern 
languages and how they act.

> > > The vocalization information in the MT is as hard data as the
> > > consonants themselves.  If you trust the graphemes of
> > > consonants to represent phonemic ("speech") values properly,
> > > you should similarly trust the graphemes of vowels to
> > > represent phonemic values properly.
> > >
> > If those graphemes representing vowels were from native
> > speakers, your claim would be valid. But seeing as the
> > last native speaker of Biblical Hebrew died about a
> > millennium previous to the invention of the vowel
> > graphemes, there is no way that they can accurately
> > represent Biblical pronunciation. Accurate memory is
> > often lost in less than a generation, let alone a millennium.
> 
> Again, so long as you refuse to look at vocalization evidence which
> native speakers did provide, you are in no place to look at non-
> vocalization information that native speakers provided as well.
> 
There is no vocalization evidence from native speakers in 
the Masoretic text.

First, the last undeniably native speaker of Biblical 
Hebrew died in very old age shortly after the end of the 
Babylonian Captivity. All claims that Hebrew continued to 
be used as a native tongue learned at mother's knee can 
be disputed, Ezra's efforts notwithstanding.

Second, even disputed claims of native speaking Hebrew 
ceased centuries before the Masoretes invented their 
vocalization points. All the Masoretes did was to invent a 
way to record a tradition that came down to them, a 
tradition that others, not I alone, also admit most likely did 
not retain an accurate recording of Biblical pronunciation.

> > > So are the Massoretic consonants.  If you want to go earlier
> > > than the Massoretic consonants you must involve yourself
> > > in the entire body of studies around the DSS, the Hexapla,
> > > and early Hebrew inscriptions.  So long as you are unable to
> > > fully compare the Massoretic Text to the results of such
> > > study yourself, you're stuck with the Massoretic Text, for all
> > > that it contains.
> > >
> > Wrong.
> 
> Which part is wrong?
> 
That I need to go to all the DSS.

For one, much in the DSS are irrelevant to a study of 
Biblical Hebrew, as they are dealing with contemporary and 
other topics not directly related to Biblical Hebrew.

Secondly, others have already done the work, why 
reinvent the wheel when I can stand on the shoulders of 
those who have gone before?

As for the Hexepla, the same criticism as attaches itself to 
the Masoretes applies to the Hexepla, the only difference 
being a shorter time span.

But I would love to see more of early Hebrew inscriptions 
and ostraca, and this is one area where my isolation 
really frustrates me, where I can often access only a 
scholar's interpretation with, if I am lucky, a low resolution 
image that cannot be used for independent analysis. I 
have seen very few high resolution images, and one was 
of a forgery.

Finally, I am not "stuck with the Massoretic Text, for all that 
it contains.", for I am not constrained to accepting the 
Masoretic points. I can ignore them as new invention.

...
> 
> Yitzhak Sapir

What I am looking for is recognizable and extensive 
documentary evidence from the second millennium BC in 
both Aramaic and Hebrew. Obviously you have nothing 
on the Aramaic side. You selectively rule out extant 
Hebrew documents as copies of relevant Hebrew 
examples, and for no historical reasons. Mere statistical 
analysis for which numerous possible mechanisms for 
causing correlation exist, does not count as evidence. 
While I admit that your theory could be right, the lack of 
evidence on your part as to why I should accept your 
model in the first place, contradicted by other evidence, 
leads me to put it in the doubtful file. It is not that I refuse to 
look at the data, as others previously in different contexts 
explained it to me in greater detail than you did in this 
exchange, rather I need to see a good reason to accept 
your model as to why I should accept your statistical 
analysis in the first place, backed up by historical data 
which you, by your own admission, do not have.

Run out of time again.

Karl W. Randolph.

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