Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

From: Isaac Fried

Be specific, please, if you think that "proto-Semitic" is more than a 
convenient myth.


***

The reasons to accept Proto-Semitic are * exactly * the same reasons that 
enables you to talk about Hebrew in the first place.

In spite of more or less obvious differences, all the varieties of Hebrew 
are Hebrew because they share a huge amount of features, phonetic, 
morphological, lexical, syntactical, etc.

It happens that most of the features are also shared by a set of languages 
that have come to be called Semitic.

Proto-Semitic is a synthetic way of describing these features.

There is no descriptive, qualitative nor epistemological discontinuity 
between any linguistic variety, characterized as being Hebrew, and 
Proto-Semitic.

If you think these features are a myth, then what are the reasons to accept 
that Hebrew exists?


Arnaud Fournet