Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

BR: 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 ;-)

JCR: The problem with what you have just said is that 
it is based on so many unverifiable assumptions. You 
assume that:

i) Humans evolved from another more primative species
ii) You assume that humans and apes have a common 
ancestor and that therefore the language of apes can 
be considered as valid evidence

There is no data supporting your assumptions, just a 
scientific model which has largely gained acceptance by 
the scientific community.

The scientific data, for example the thermodynamic 
principle of Gibb's free energy and subsequent 
feasibility of chemical reactions, proves beyond a 
shadow of a doubt that spontaneous life creating 
reactions could not have occurred and by extension 
calls into question any theories that man evolved from 
primates. Of course, this goes way beyond the 
linguistic scope of this list but if you interested in 
hearing the chemical proofs then send me an email off 
list and I'll be happy to explain them to you.

Suffice to say that because of these scientific reasons 
I find it difficult to accept your assumptions as 
linguistic proofs.

Anyway, let's entertain your assumptions and assume 
that they are right to see if they hold up. In order 
for such a model to be workable we would need to be 
able to observe a human child (whose linguistic 
abilities are already far more complex than the primate 
stages you suggest) has the ability to learn a limited 
range of meaningful single syllable utterances and by 
process of combination to make more complex words from 
them. I am trying to be open minded about this but 
I have very strong reasons for doubting the feasibility 
of such an experiment.

Children learn language through cognitive mechanisms 
and by associating words to objects and situations. 
There is no plausible cognitive model that could enable 
a child to understand the elements that Isaac Fried 
is suggesting to therefore be able to use them to 
construct more complex concepts. However, the real 
elements of language 'objects and actions' are 
tangible to a child in its early phases of cognitive 
development and form a plausible and testable 
linguistic framework which is supported by the data of 
over 6 million living languages.

It is quite clear that Isaac has not, until now, 
considered the psycholinguistic implications of his 
claims or the cognitive mechanisms of linguistic 
representation in the formulation of his theory. In 
order for small primate children to learn and utilise 
the elements he is suggesting they would have to have 
had a cognitive system far different from humans, 
apes and for that matter any living animal on the 
planet who all use objects as the basis of their 
cognitive understanding.

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


























































































































cognitive understanding.

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