Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Nir:

Thanks for the explanation.

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. 
<nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>wrote:

> karl,
>
> the talmudic, medieval and modern hebrew dialects are all tense-based,
> and so is aramaic. it would be more natural to assume an
> aramaic influence on modern hebrew, as opposed to a greek one.
>

I’ll have to watch for that the next time I read Daniel and Ezra. I was
never taught Aramaic other than that it has its grammatical forms.

I was told that the modern common belief that Biblical Hebrew conjugated for
aspect was because of comparing it to other Semitic languages that were
conjugated for aspect. But if Aramaic is tense based, then I wonder what I
was told comes from.

>
> in fact, aramaic and talmudic hebrew admit a one-to-one
> correspondence in the phoneme, lexical, grammatical and syntax levels,
> to the extent that i would call talmudic hebrew a word-for-word
> transliterated aramaic dialect (you can check it, for example,
> on the book of daniel). also, the tensing using past, present,
> future and auxiliary verb hyh/hwh are basically equal.


That Talmudic Hebrew would be basically an Aramaic dialect indicates that
Hebrew was not a natively spoken language during the Talmudic era. There are
indications already in the post-Babylonian Exile Biblical books that
Biblical Hebrew had ceased to be spoken as a natively spoken language


> this
> cannot be said about hebrew (or aramaic) vs any european language.
>

Thanks for your explanation, which indicates that the switch to tense based
conjugations was caused by exposure to a tense based conjugated Semitic
language, earlier than the exposure to tense conjugated European languages.

>
> nir cohen
>
> >>> Hence, looking not at the forms but at the actions that underlie the
> forms,
> I see the grammar of modern Israeli Hebrew to be a European language
> grammar, very different from the grammar of Biblical Hebrew. That is why I
> consider modern Israeli Hebrew to be a modern European language.
>
> Where did the belief that Biblical Hebrew conjugated for aspect come from?

Karl W. Randolph.