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  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: "fred putnam" <fred.putnam AT gmail.com>, "fred burlingame" <tensorpath AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] cognate alphabet
  • Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 11:25:01 +0100


From: "fred putnam" <fred.putnam AT gmail.com>

2. Cognate Semitic languages (e.g., Ugaritic and Hurrian) and Greek (LXX)
are used from time to time to interpret biblical passages,
***
I suppose you meant: Cognate Semitic languages (e.g., Ugaritic), Hurrian, etc.
Hurrian is certainly not a Semitic languages.
A.
***


5. BDB lists Hebrew from the Second Temple period as "NH" (= New (Late)
Hebrew); it also refers to the Mishna (abbreviated "Mish(n).") and Talmud
(abbr. "Talm."). Linguistic descent, however, has no bearing on a word's
antecedents. Both "dynamo" and "dynamite" were created from the Greek word
"dynamis", which refers to "power" or "strength", but no ancient Greek was
thinking of either dynamite or a dynamo when saying or writing "dynamis".
The English word "gossip" was "god-sib", meaning a friend who was close
enough to be a relative ("sibling"), normally the person who might be asked
to be a child's godparent at their christening. It was a great compliment to
be called a "gossip", because it meant that you were such close friends that
you unburdened your hearts to one another. (Note how the word "gossip" is
used in many of Shakespeare's plays. Note also that it does not occur in the
King James (Authorised) Version.) Eventually, however, the word referred not
only to a bosom friend, but to someone who shared with others what they had
received in confidence, and to "gossip" became a sin (and appears in modern
translations where KJV reads "tale-bearer"). James Barr's work, *The
Semantics of Biblical Language*, is helpful on this point, as is Ferdinand
de Saussure, *Course in General Linguistics*.
***
To be frank I do not see what Saussure adds here!?
A.
***



7. On cognates, see any discussion of the Semitic languages, perhaps
beginning with Bergstrasser's *Introduction & Text Specimens* (not the exact
title). On Greek, Hebrew and Greek are *not* cousins, any more than Chinese
and English are "cousins". The two languages are not related, as you will
see if you read any discussion of linguistic families (so-called).
***
Actually they may be distant cousins.
All these statements about "being not related" are overstatements or miswordings.
A.
***


On the
"omission of its children", see #5 (above). Its descendants are rarely
material witnesses to their ancestor.

I strongly recommend that you do some reading in these areas and then come
back with questions; it will make the discussion far more profitable for us
both (all):


- A college-level introduction to linguistics (e.g., George Yule, among
many others)
- General linguistics (e.g., John Lyons)
- Historical linguistics (e.g., Theodora Bynon)
- Comparative Semitics (e.g., articles in *Encyclopedia Judaica*,
*Encyclopedia
Britannica*, Bergstrasser (above))
- Lexical Semantics (e.g., Barr (above), Moises Silva, *Biblical Words
and Their Meanings*)

I hope that this is helpful.
***

Thanks.

Other references, sometimes more recent, are possible.

Arnaud Fournet






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