Biblical Hebrew Forum

["JAMES CHRISTIAN READ" <JCR128 AT student.anglia.ac.uk>]

Hi Isaac,

any theory that attempts to account for language by its
building blocks is worth considering. Language is, after
all, a combinatorial process. Morphemes + roots = words, 
words + more words = meaningful clauses. Clauses + more 
clauses = meaningful sentences. Sentences + more 
sentences = meaningful paragraphs. Paragraphs + more 
paragraphs = a story. So it would make sense that a 
primitive languages' phonemes had conceptual meaning of 
their own which could be combined to express more 
meaningful concepts.

However, a number of things you say need addressing in 
my mind:

1) Your ideas about man 'inventing' language are 
demonstrably incorrect. Language is an instinct which 
are hardwired to acquire from birth and, some argue, 
perhaps even before. A good read on this subject is 
Steven Pinker's 'The language instinct'. We have no more 
control over our destiny to learn a language than a 
spider does over its destiny to instinctively learn 
how to spin a web or than a bee does to instinctively 
learn how to make honey. Our language acquiring hardware 
is built atop of our cognitive system and other animals 
cannot learn our complex languages because they lack 
the hardware to do it.

2) With the concepts you propose it is impossible to 
make more complex meanings other than he/she/it is etc.
How can you possibly expect to make more complex 
meanings out of the ingredients:

i) forms of the verb 'to be'
ii) personal pronouns
iii) concept of plurality

I was actually getting interested in your theory up to 
the point where you presented this nonsense list of 
ingredients.

3) There are still many surviving languages that have 
their root system in tact. Can you provide any parallel
examples from living languages. I would start your 
search in a place like this 
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto?currentPage=all
An excellent example of what languages probably used to
be like.

4) The whole story seems to be lacking in any formal 
description of what process you used to reach your 
conclusions. Was there any scientific method used? What 
inspired you to do this work? Are you absolute in your 
conclusions? Or do you acknowledge that there are 
problems with your model?

Yours respectfully

James Christian Read
BSc Computer Science (thesis: concept driven machine translation using the 
Aleppo codex)
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew 









































































es probably used to
be like.

4) The whole story seems to be lacking in any formal 
description of what process you used to reach your 
conclusions. Was there any scientific method used? What 
inspired you to do this work? Are you absolute in your 
conclusions? Or do you acknowledge that there are 
problems with your model?

Yours respectfully

James Christian Read
BSc Computer Science (thesis: concept driven machine translation using the 
Aleppo codex)
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew