Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

IF:I believe that man is "hardwired" for one purpose only: to be in the shape
and image of God, namely, to have a body and soul interacting in divine
harmony, with the sole and overriding imperative to do His (or nature's)
bidding.  Everything else follows from this.

JCR: I agree that we were made in Yhwh's shadow. I also 
agree that our ability to communicate is a result of 
this. Were we perhaps differ in our understanding is 
in my open acknowledgement of our possession of 
hardware dedicated to this purpose. A part of that 
dedicated hardware (with its hardwired algorithms) is 
dedicated to learning the phonetic system of its first 
language with no regard to meaning. This simple 
biological fact seems to stand in opposition to your 
theory. Unless of course you were to suggest that the 
ancient Hebrews possessed a part of the brain which we 
don't.

IF: I saw Steven Pinker's interesting book 'The language instinct' some time 
ago
and am awaiting now the sequels: "The money-making instinct" and "The
succeeding-in-academia instinct", which as you know, are also both
"hardwired" into us.

JCR: I strongly suggest you buy it and read it rather 
than mocking it and sweeping it aside without giving it 
any serious consideration. In order for your proposals 
to be given any serious linguistic consideration you 
need to be able to place inside a workable model of 
the collected wealth of psycholinguistic knowledge to 
our disposal. As it stands your proposals contradict 
that model head on with not so much as the offer of a 
plausible explanation.

IF: For a moment I was hopeful that you would perceive the ingenuity of Hebrew
(which is surely an invented language of supremely intelligent design), but
then, at the critical moment you hastily retreated back into the convenience
of convention. 

JCR: No. Not really! I was just giving the best 
consideration I could to your theory. I respect the 
time and effort you have put into this and was trying 
to help you. As a computational linguist I tried the 
tools available to me to test out your theory and 
merely pointed out where it fails so that you could 
attempt to provide further explanation or a more 
plausible model.

IF: I know it is difficult to accept that the Hebrew language
consists solely of existence markers, a plurality marker and identity
markers (this is what reality is: existence + plurality + identity), but by
the same token there are many people who have a hard time accepting that all
matter consists of zillions of tiny, identical, lively creatures called
atoms, consisting themselves of elementary particles such as protons,
neutrons and electrons.

JCR: The model of atoms is a workable model which it is 
routine to explain how more complex compounds can be 
formed. The idea of elements of language is not new to 
your study. Where your model fails is that you present 
elements which cannot produce more complex meaning. Or 
at least you fail to offer an explanation of how these 
elements can form more complex meaning. With what you 
have given us to work on the best I can come up with is 

I am
you are
he is
she is
it is 
they are
we are 
you are

Please forgive me for making this observation but there 
is much more to the expressive range of Hebrew than the 
present simple conjugation of the verb 'to be'. So 
please either explain your model further or present 
more plausible elements.

IF:Pay attention to the fact that AB-BA is a reference to the single-consonant
root B that I am saying may be pronounced as AB or BA.

JCR: I followed that bit. What exactly is your point?

IF: I think we should leave alone the hooting and hissing Amazon Indians and
concentrate instead on Hebrew. I am not excluding the possibility that the
eminent American linguistics professor did not encounter a new tribe but
rather fell upon a day trip party of the local asylum. Your obsession with
"primitive" languages appears to me also misguided. 

JCR: What obsession? I was just trying to help you.

IF:There is no language (I
am ignorant of Chinese) 

JCR: Am I to take this to mean you are familiar with 
the other 6 million?

IF:on the face of this earth more primitive than Hebrew
(and its sisters). 

JCR: What linguistic metric are you using to make this 
claim? If you had read Stephen Pinker's book you would 
know about the proto-world reconstruction which is 
theoretically far more primitive.

IF: In fact, I can hardly see how a language can be,
constructively, simpler than Hebrew. 

JCR: A language without conjugations? Like English 
for example?

IF: What can be simpler than a language of
existence + plurality + identity, which is the very essence of our material
reality? 

JCR: You base your assumptions on the simplicity of 
Hebrew on your own model which you have not yet proven?
How can you expect me or anyone else to accept this as 
valid evidence until you have actually proven it 
linguistically. You are basically saying 'my theory is 
right because Hebrew is the simplest language as shown 
by theory'. Circular reasoning is not particularly 
respected as valid evidence on this mailing list.

IF: What language has simpler and more transparent words than BO, ZO,
LO, MO? I am afraid you are also confusing the constructive stage of the
language leading to the word with the evocative or imaginative part of the
language from the word on.

JCR: Could you expand on this please? I'm not sure I 
follow you.

IF: I can imagine the Amazon Indians laughing their belly off upon learning 
that
the language of the people camping by the River Thames is so primitive that
it has no word for producing music.

JCR: lol

IF: I invite you to read my book, which can be found in hard copy in any good
academic library, or in electronic form on my site www.hebrewetymology.com.
It lists all the Hebrew (+Aramaic) roots extant, resolved into their
elementary or constituent components. See (open mindedly) how the Hebrew
root is assembled from the existence and plurality markers, and then how the
root is turned into a word by the addition of identity markers (personal
pronouns). I am convinced you will be eventually swayed into the camp of
reason as there is no alternative (except for a No Alternative theory) to
what I am suggesting.

JCR: There is an alternative. It is the theory that all 
languages are composed of words which are merely 
combinations of meaningless syllables. The data of over 
6 million languages currently backs up my theory. How 
many languages back your theory up? 

Your research is interesting to me but I sincerely 
doubt that reading through thousands or roots and their 
breakdown is going to convince me until you at least 
make a minimal effort to put your work into a sound 
linguistic framework of some sort. I tried to help you 
by giving you the best starting point I could think but 
your response has only succeeded in convincing me that 
you are not interested in the slightest in attempting 
to place your work in any kind of sound framework other
than a 'take my word for it' kind of linguistic
approach. Most people on this list are hardcore
independent and intelligent linguistic thinkers and I
doubt that such an attitude will sway many of its
members.

IF: Your question as to how I got there is patently unscientific, yet the 
answer
is By thinking hard over many years.

JCR: About what?

James Christian Read
BSc Computer Science
thesis1: concept driven machine translation using the Aleppo codex
thesis2: language acquisition simulation
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew


















me sort. I tried to help you
by giving you the best starting point I could think but
your response has only succeeded in convincing me that
you are not interested in the slightest in attempting
to place your work in any kind of sound framework other
than a 'take my word for it' kind of linguistic
approach. Most people on this list are hardcore
independent a