Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

On 18 Jun 2009 at 17:28, Naama Zahavi-Ely wrote:

> >Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:41:31 -0700
> >From: dwashbur AT nyx.net
> >Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Chomsky and Hebrew
> >To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> >Message-ID: <4A390EAB.1199.1387B4B4 AT dwashbur.nyx.net>
> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> >
> >
> >
> >On 17 Jun 2009 at 17:12, Naama Zahavi-Ely wrote:
> >
> >> With all due respect to Chomsky, may I suggest that he was
> writing
> >> at a time that (modern) Hebrew was spoken primarily by people
> who
> >> studied it as a second language?  This is no longer the case.  I
> am
> >> a third-generation native Hebrew speaker, and I can tell you that
> my
> >> sense of grammar and language is quite different from the
> >> Indo-European one.  
> >> 
> >> Obviously I am not claiming that modern Hebrew and Biblical
> Hebrew
> >> are the same.  Neither are modern and Shakespearian English --
> or,
> >> for that matter, everyday spoken and formal written English of
> our
> >> own time.
> >
> >I wouldn't know about that, and obviously there aren't too many
> people we can ask.  But are 
> >you suggesting that modern Hebrew has changed  drastically enough
> in just three 
> >generations that it's now radically more semitic than it was when
> Chomsky wrote that 
> >comment?
> >
> >Dave Washburn
> >
> >http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
> 
> Actually, there is quite a number of people you can ask (or observe)
> at this point -- I am unusual among my own age group (over 50), but
> the younger generations are much more likely to be second, third, or
> even fourth generation Hebrew speakers in Israel nowadays.  I am
> suggesting not so much a change in the language as a change in its
> speakers (though the language has changed, of course).  There is a
> difference between learning a language directly (as one's first
> language) and learning it through another language (as a second
> language).  I would suggest that modern Hebrew is still very much a
> Semitic language, and has much more in common
> grammatically/structurally with  Biblical Hebrew than with, say,
> English or Yiddish.  I am not talking only of morphology but also of
> concepts and the language's manner of handling them.

As I mentioned in a different reply, I believe he was speaking of the 
structure of the verb 
system, which we know was not tensed in BH.  I really can't say anything 
beyond that 
without checking the quote, and that's going to take some time.

Dave Washburn

http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur