Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

>
> IF: The idea that ancient Hebrews started their language with meaningless
> syllables that somehow got combined into meaningful words is anathema to me.
> How, and by what system, pray, did these meaningless sound bits combine into
> meaningful words, again, by a "hardwired algorithm?" I am really astounded
> that there are people on the face of this earth who accept such nonsense.
>
> JCR: For people who believe that Yhwh created Adam and
> Eve, along with their language, and that Yhwh created
> a whole series of new languages at Babel such a theory
> presents no problem.
>

KWR: Even for those who believe that YHWH created Adam and Eve, along with
the language, and that YHWH created (actually mixed up) a whole series
of new languages at Babel, this still creates a problem. 1) There was
not enough time recorded for the language to evolve from grunts to a
fully constructed language and 2) if YHWH created all in the first
place and expected to communicate with his creation, it does not make
sense that he would not give man a "mature" language from the outset,
a language able to communicate complex ideas. 3) There is no record of
such an evolution to observe, all we have in Hebrew is from its
earliest record it was already a mature language with tri-literal
roots.

JCR: We are both saying the same thing Karl. Isaac was 
saying that Hebrew evolved from single syllables with 
elemental meanings of languages and that there was no 
other alternative theory worth considering. I was 
saying that there is another theory worth considering 
and that that is the theory that all languages are 
made up of combinations of meaningless syllables. Isaac 
was arguing that this is impossible from an 
evolutionary point of view. It was at this point that I 
pointed out that those whose believe Yhwh create Adam 
and Eve and likewise their language are presented with 
no such evolutionary linguistic problems. The exact 
same points you just made.

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










































































































































































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