Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Karl:


***
One can’t observe mental operations, not even among modern people.
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.
***
I agree that "words" and morphemes can be sorted out in different 
categories. All speakers do that either implicitly or explicitly.
I seriously disagree that syntax and grammar are observable: they are mostly 
complete artefacts based on the "Western" tradition.
The Chinese never bothered about grammar and they are still not convinced it 
has any real use (at least in their language).
They just had it that some words are main words and some others are empty 
(=grammatical) words.

I'm still fairly unconvinced by your example with Proverbs. I cannot 
determine how much of your analysis is really in the document and how much 
is due to you applying your grid upon that line.
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.
***
To be frank, this strikes me as being very "naive" and somewhat sounding 
like 19th century Positivism.
I very seriously doubt that there exists something like a "non theoretical" 
or "pre-theoretical" observation.
In addition most advances in sciences like physics result from modelizations 
that have been *afterwards* confirmed or infirmed.
I do not believe in that kind of ultra-empirical "bottom-up" theory of 
knowledge.
Relativity Theory typically deconstructs the concepts of space, time and 
matter, that were a kind of untouchable given.
It took centuries just to invent the concept of force, which seems 
"obvious", and to draw it with an arrow.

Arnaud Fournet