Biblical Hebrew Forum

[belaga AT math.u-strasbg.fr]

Not so fast, please.

I do not want to take sides in this dispute.: the problem of the  
emergence of natural languages has been rightly called recently "the  
most difficult scientific problem".

However, Biblical Hebrew (the main topic of this forum), and some  
Semitic languages with it, do possess some unique, fundamental, and  
"primeval" feature not shared by other languages: the three consonant  
sturcture of verbs which, from the mathematical point of view, is at  
least as optimal as the command structure of any artificially designed  
Assembler language:

http://padis2.uniroma1.it:81/ojs/index.php/cogphil/search/authors/view?firstName=Edward&middleName=G.&lastName=Belaga&affiliation=Universit%C3%A9%20dfe%20Strasbourg

Dr. Edward G. Belaga
******************************************************
Institut de Recherche en Mathématique Avancée
Universite Louis Pasteur
7, rue René Descartes, 67084 Strasbourg Cedex, FRANCE
tel.: 333 90 24 02 35, FAX: 333 90 24 03 28 , cellular: 336 76 29 63 04
e-mail : edward.belaga AT math.u-strasbg.fr
******************************************************



Quoting James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>:

> Sure. I get the logic. You could also make an argument based on Adam's
> name. But these arguments are by no means conclusive. Although, these
> concepts do not translate well into all languages that is not to say
> that there could not have been an prior language where this play on
> words also worked. It works in English (man and woman) and all we have
> to do is translate Adam's name into English and we could make an
> argument for English being the 'mother' of all languages and the
> language that was spoken in Eden.
>
> Also, even if we were to actually know what language Adam and Eve were
> speaking in the garden of Eden that would in no way make it the
> 'mother' of all languages as if other languages descended from it. The
> account of Babel does not describe a gradual process of linguistic
> evolution. It describes the very sudden and instantaneous confusion of
> everybody's language so that each were using a completely different
> set of words. There is not even an undertone that these languages are
> all etymologically related in some way.
>
> James Christian
> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.



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