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  • From: Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>
  • To: James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew List <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] theories and standards
  • Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 09:03:13 -0400

It was in my opinion uni-consonantal.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On May 18, 2009, at 8:21 AM, James Read wrote:


Hi,

that's an interesting thought. If it was bi-consonantal with 22
different characters we would be limited to 22*22=484 basic roots. But
with triconsonant we have a maximum possible range of 10,648. There is
a massive amount of redundancy in this figure, though, because usually
about 2,000 core roots account for about 70% of any particular language.

James Christian


Quoting 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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