Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

I haven't analysed all the verb forms as Rolf Furuli has but as a  
computer scientist I can offer my 2p's worth. Everything Rolf says  
about his method is empirically correct and cannot be ignored. The  
more variables you throw into a problem the less certain you can be of  
your conclusions. This is especially more so with biblical hebrew  
where our data set is so small.

This is similar to a simulation problem I am currently working on. I  
am modelling the reactions in human cell on a super computer. If you  
raise the amount of protein x the amount of protein y may also  
increase. But if you raise the amount of protein v and protein x the  
amount of protein y may decrease. This is because protein v is an  
inhibitor of protein y. This is just a quick example to show the  
effect of throwing more varibles into the equation and how difficult  
it can be to extract rules that can be trusted.

I am not saying that I automatically agree with all of Rolf's  
conclusions. I am just saying that his method is scientifically sound.  
The only thing it probably lacks is that he was the sole analyser of  
the verb forms. The study would have more worth if many hebraists  
performed the same tests and statistics were averaged. As it stands we  
can only take his word for it.

I would suggest that anyone with doubts should select a sample text  
and apply Rolf's method and gather their own statistics. While  
discrepancies are to be expected I would suspect that there would not  
be any large variations from Rolf's results.

James Christian

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