Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

IF: James,

I am terribly sorry but what you are saying makes no sense to me. I  
know that the fault could rest all with me. I may be improperly  
hardwired, ignorant, or possibly not steeped deep enough in  
"psycholinguistics". I don't know. A statement such as "the only  
natural conclusion I can draw is that for your model to work it would  
require the ancient Hebrews to have had a cognitive system not only  
different from modern day humans but from primates and all other  
living animals that have eyes and ears" is truly beyond me. Sorry, we  
appear to inhabit different intellectual worlds.

JCR: Ok! I am beginning to realise that maybe I haven't 
explained my objection to your model well enough. Let 
me try again but if I fail this time please let me 
know which parts I haven't explained well enough.

Language is combinatorial. That is to say we combine
words to make clauses. We combine clauses to make 
sentences etc. etc.This is the appealing part of your 
theory because it introduces a new level of combination 
- elemental consonants to form meaningful roots.

There is no psycholinguistic problem to the observation 
that we combine words to make sentences because we 
have a cognitive system which is able to associate 
words with objects, their properties and their actions.

There *is* a psycholinguistic problem with your model 
because there is no plausible cognitive model which 
would enable the brain of a human child to associate 
the elements you suggest with consonants and therefore 
be able to use them as a combinatorial basis.

Please be specific about the parts you don't understand
or take issue with in further replies.

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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

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