Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <bsr15 AT cantsl.it.canterbury.ac.nz>]

James wrote:-

>Keeping this on a scientific and linguistic
>level all I can say is that I have seen no
>archeological or linguistic evidence that any human
>language ever evolved from a less complex language of
>meaningful single syllable utterances.

I've not sure why you would expect to see such evidence.
Humans had been around for hundreds of thousands of years
before they started to commit their languages to writing.
If you look at apes, then at humans, some such evolution
must of occurred. By the time you get to the Hebrew speakers
they are only a heartbeat in time away from us. While some
sort of evolution must be continuing I would not be surprized
if its so small that it is undetectable if you are just looking
at the period between writers of the Hebrew text and ourselves.

Of course, if you're young earth creationist all bets are off ;-)

Bill Rea, ICT Services, University of Canterbury \_
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