Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>]

Karl:

Science is limited to the physical universe where observations can be made. 
Linguistics is the scientific study of languages, which can be observed. 
Dead languages (i.e. no longer spoken as a native tongue), like Biblical 
Hebrew, can be studied only in so far as they have been written down, and we 
can analyze those writings.
Karl W. Randolph.

***
That's an interesting point.
In a previous mail, you discussed the *grammatical* structure of a proverb.
How do you *observe* grammar and syntactical connections and relationships?
IMHO only words and sounds can be observed in the ultra-empirical approach 
that you seem to defend, grammar and semantics are mental operations, or 
what else are they?
How do you observe these mental operations?
Best
Arnaud Fournet
***



Science, of which linguistics is part, is not a mere cataloguing a list of 
isolated observations, rather it includes recognizing patterns within those 
observations. In linguistics, those patterns include recognizing nouns, 
verbs, declensions, etc. Syntax and grammar are complex patterns, but 
observable.
***
If it were true, how do you explain that the most powerful computers are 
still (laughably) unable to translate one language to another?
Actually if you translate A to B and then B to A, and so on, it increasingly 
spirals into nonsense.
That hypothesis that "grammar" and "patterns" exist is IMHO an artefact of 
the (uncritical) worship of Greek "Logic".
My personal opinion is that grammar does not exist, only semantics does. 
People generate grammar out of semantics and not the other way round.
A.
***



My problem is not with speculation per se, because speculation can often 
help us recognize patterns, but it becomes a problem when it is elevated to 
be equal with observation or even superior thereto, when it could very well 
be wrong.
***
The idea that observation per se "exists" is a fallacy.
Ultimately you need words to *convert* those observations into something 
*assertable* and *thinkable*.
And that operation of conversion is anything but neutral: it entails a 
selection, a dismissal and a categorization of a limited set of features 
interpreted from the whole situation.
Cf. A theory is what tells you what is a fact and what is not a fact.
This explains that people who "saw" the same do not explain the same thing 
and do not remember the same thing.
A.
***



An example of the scientific method can be found at 
http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Scientific_Method_from_science_textbooks
Karl W. Randolph.
***
There is *only one* language called Hebrew.
So the study of Hebrew is not *repeatable*, therefore impossibly scientific 
according to that reference.
I'll let all of us on the list assess if that statement is acceptable or 
not.
Most sciences dealing with human beings are about peculiar details and 
specific "facts", that are unique or happened once. I tend to think there is 
about never general "laws" in those sciences.
Typology is the name for the study of those specific features that are 
shared by at least any two given phenomena.

Best

Arnaud Fournet