Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Hi,

the reason I like CL as opposed to theoretical linguistics so much is
because we can put blatantly misguided statements like the following to the
test.

Evidently, then, linguistic knowledge counts for a lot.  But there's another
> issue here.  The question at hand is not about translation, not about
> semantics, not about syntax, not about morphology, not about
> phonology.  It is about orthography.  Compared to all the above,
> orthography is a much more manageable study.  For orthography, the
> data set is reasonable.  Even for some other aspects it is reasonable.
>
>
OK. The following paragraphs you wrote are our training data set for your
theory. Our test data set will be English written on the internet. Using
your 'linguistic knowledge'  which you derive from this training set please
present me with an algorithm which defines the orthography of the English
language. If you don't know how to program I'll write the program for you if
you provide me with precise pseudocode. I already know what the result will
be before we do this simple exercise. Even if you get your rule set 'right'
and even if we manage to implement it correctly the test set data from the
internet will show that your rule set is far too over generalised and will
not work in anywhere near as many cases as you believed it would. This is
because your training data set is *too small* to extract a reliable rule set
from. You are welcome not to believe me and put this to the test. I believe
the exercise will help you greatly.

If only theoreticians like Chomsky would actually gain some experience
putting his claims to work on real data the world of linguistics might
actually become a more scientific place. Until then the burden lies on
computational linguists to educate the world that has been misled by the
likes of Chomsky what the actually reality of language empirically is.

James Christian


> The data set does not allow us to effectively determine if there was
> a dual number in pronouns in epigraphic Hebrew.  It does not allow
> us to know if the 2fs suffix was sometimes spelled -ty.  This is because
> dual numbers and 2fs suffixes are not attested.
>
> But we can make conclusions about the 3ms pronoun which is
> attested.  In Lachish 3 (that I quoted before to you and Karl), we find
> the direct object אתה corresponding to אותו in the Bible.  The argument
> that it is the laziness of the author does not help much.  Writing the
> letter he for waw is not an issue of laziness.  Furthermore, such
> examples are rarely attested in the Bible as in 2 Ki 9:25 שלשה vs
> 2 Ki 15:25 שלישו, or Jer 2:3 תבואתה vs Lev 19:25 תבואתו.  At times,
> the sentence uses both as in Gen 49:11 עירה אתנו לבשו סותה.  But
> whereas the Bible predominantly uses waw, the epigraphic
> inscriptions use predominantly he.  Waw is used in epigraphic
> inscriptions very rarely.  It may be used in Siloam (although there
> is much debate on the subject, and on the development in this
> particular case), and it is used in the 6th century Ketef Hinnom
> amulets.  Whereas in the Bible the -w predominates in thousands
> of cases, the epigraphic evidence shows -h in almost all the
> cases.  In the epigraphic orthography, the -w suffix is used for
> the 3ms pronoun when affixed to a plural noun (the examples
> above deal with the singular noun).  The corresponding
> orthography in the Bible is -yw.  So we see two systems
> being used:
>
> Bible -
>  singular noun:  -w
>  plural noun: -yw
> Epigraphy -
>  singular noun: -h
>  plural noun: -w
>
> Linguistically, the he is probably the original.  First of all, it is found
> in Hebrew itself in verbal suffixes -hu, -ha.  Furthermore, it is found
> in cognate languages, such as Aramaic.  Also, it would logically
> appear to be a development from the 3s independent pronouns
> which start with h.  The waw form can be explained as a
> development: hu > wu > o.
>
> The epigraphic evidence is varied.  Multiple geographic locations
> are represented, multiple topics, multiple occupations of the authors,
> and we even have one on papyrus.  In addition, we know that
> religious texts always tend to a more archaic form of orthography
> and language.  We see this in the DSS where the authors use the
> Paleo-Hebrew script.  If the scribes used -h almost exclusively in
> day to day correspondence, it makes no sense for them to use
> the "innovative" forms with -w for official religious texts.  Either
> the same spelling will be used, or the more innovative one for day
> to day.  But not the other way around.
>
> Yitzhak Sapir
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