Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 16/01/2007 18:57, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
> ...
>
> This is a restatement of your "observation" much differently than it was
> before you investigated the numbers.  In any case, I am glad you approve
> of his numbers because as far as I can see, his numbers assume your
> "observation" is false. ...

Indeed. But if Karl's hypothesis is true, there is a smaller number of 
homonyms with either sin or shin, in fact 40 rather than 71, which would 
put the percentage of homonyms slightly at the low end of the 
distribution rather than slightly at the high end. On the other hand, 
even if sin and shin were originally one letter, one would expect a 
certain number of sin-shin homonym pairs consistent with the proportion 
of homonyms observed for every other letter.

But the plot you have suggested indeed shows that if the figure of 40 
rather than 71 is used this falls significantly off the curve. If sin 
and shin are taken separately, the figure for shin of 259/30 also falls 
a little below the pack, but does not stand out from it as clearly as 
336/40.

> ...
>
> In other words, your "observation" was that there are very rare cases where
> Shin/Sin pairs of words are homonyms as opposed to the "synonyms."
> Peter's data assumes that all Shin/Sin pairs are homonyms.  Furthermore,
> Peter does not check your claim.  To check your claim one has to calculate
> some 230 values for each possible pair of two letters (alef-bet, alef-gimel,
> and so on) to determine how likely is it that the interchange of the two
> letters will give us a homonym.  Then we check the Shin-Sin pair against
> all other pairs.  Well, I'm not going to do that.
>   

I doubt if there is enough data for this study.

> ...
>
> When graphed, the data clearly show that there is a nice upwards curve.
> Resh's data point appears way out there because there are so many
> number of roots that have Resh in Peter's list.  The question is: why is
> there such a nice curve?  why do the data for the letters cluster around
> a curved line? ...

I suspect that the graph follows something like a 2/3 power curve 
passing through the origin. This is because of how I think the 
statistics work, but it does fit the graph reasonably well. Passing 
through the origin is essential because zero roots implies zero 
homonyms. Indeed the data point for he with mappiq is also a good one: 
just eight roots implies zero homonyms. But the calculation needs to be 
done separately for first, second and third root letters. The figures in 
column X of my spreadsheet are based on this hypothesis. These figures 
are fairly constant, as would be expected. The high figure for sin on 
its own is because of the four homonyms for sin as the second root 
letter of which three are (alleged) homonyms of (&H.

...
> ...
>
> That is, if one assumes as do you that Sin and Shin never describe a 
> difference
> in meaning, one has trouble explaining that odd data point.  If one
> assumes that
> Sin and Shin always describe a difference in meaning, as Peter did, then, 
> well,
> isn't that reason to consider them unique phonemes?
>
>   
Yitzhak, thanks for your clear reasoning on this. The data now clearly 
imply that there are sin-shin homonyms, because if all observed sin-shin 
pairs are simply variations of the same root the number of homonyms 
involving sin or shin is far too low.

But I think Karl could rescue his theory than sin and shin were 
originally one phoneme by abandoning his suggestion that there are no 
sin-shin homonyms, and accepting rather that most of the sin-shin pairs 
arise from resolution of homonym pairs, as I in fact assumed. So I don't 
think these data help us to resolve the question of whether sin and shin 
were originally separate in Hebrew.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/