Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Clearing up the morphology of Hebrew, CV and CVC

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Kimmo Huovila <kimmo.huovila AT kolumbus.fi>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Clearing up the morphology of Hebrew, CV and CVC
  • Date: Sat, 8 Oct 2011 09:31:04 +0300

On perjantai 07 lokakuu 2011, K Randolph wrote:
>
> I question some of the presuppositions of “historical” linguistics.
> Languages and language families both lose and gain phones and phonemes.

This is very true.

> Languages within a family develop at different rates, even those that close
> geographically can be very different in their developments.

This is also true. The question of whether there is a strong connection
between the people groups or whether they are isolated from each other plays
a
major role. A strong connection will increase mutual influence between the
languages.

> Close languages
> can go on divergent development paths.

Yes.

> Therefore, one cannot count on being
> able to use cognate languages as guides to studying a target language. It is
> speculation to use them as evidence, proof will have to come from the target
> language.

Your statement comes across as a total rejection of a methodology based on
some recognized limitations in it. A total rejection of the methodology is
not
justified by the premises mentioned alone.

A lot depends on what you are trying to establish. Comparative linguistics is
not at its best trying to figure out the meaning of an individual idiom or
precise meaning of a vocabulary item in one of the languages. However, it may
give reasonable confidence in the structure of the language and its history.

Those doing historical linguistics are usually aware of your very valid
reservations above on gaining and losing phonemes and divergent development
paths (at least if they are academic linguists). They share these
presuppositions of yours instead of opposing them. These phenomena are taken
seriously and studied. Language change has been studied extensively by
historical linguists. Two important areas of change are sound changes and
semantic changes. Both have been studied across languages.

Language relationships and historical reconstructions are not based on
isolated, individual items bearing some fancy relationship to each other.
That
weight of evidence would be close to zero. Rather you must have cumulative
evidence. If you see that there is a systematic change from one language to
the other across the shared vocabulary, then you can use that to do
historical
reconstructions. Preferably you need to know well several of the known
related
languages to make proper reconstructions.

People fluent in two related languages can often tell if two vocabulary items
are the same across the two languages, even if they are not linguists.

Now, if you have languages that can be shown to be related (systematic
correspondences with systematic sound changes across enough vocabulary items
and morphemes), you can reconstruct a proto-language. You may consider the
reconstructed language (for example proto-Semitic) as a theoretical construct
instead of a historical one, if you so wish – many in the field do. The proto-
language will often be a reasonable approximation of the historical language,
but because of the methodology it will be a smoothed-out language in the
sense
that real languages tend to have more exceptions than what a reconstruction
will give you.

Unless any related (=Semitic) language has a CV-only syllable structure, and
the later Hebrew language does not have it, for CV Hebrew there are two
alternatives.
1) Earlier, pre-Hebrew language had also CVC syllables, Hebrew lost them and
regained them. This theory would need positive support for Hebrew losing them.
2) Earlier, pre-Hebrew Semitic language never had CVC syllables, but the
daughter languages all gained them, with Hebrew gaining them late (after
Biblical Hebrew). This also requires more complex presuppositions than also
Hebrew having been a language with CVC syllables, so it would need positive
support.

I personally do not know the syllable structures of related languages and
evidence for them, so I leave that part for other to address, if need be. My
point here is methodological.

Are these scenarios for CV Hebrew completely impossible? Not really, but are
they likely? Is there supporting evidence? This is the right question.

You offer the aesthetic argument of CV syllables sounding poetic. Does that
prove more than that you find CV syllables poetic? Would any language gain
the
same poetic touch if you opened all closed syllables?

I wonder whether you rejection of historical linguistics is because of lack
of
knowledge about how they address your concerns. If so, and if you are
interested in pursuing this further, I would encourage to read a good
introduction to historical linguistics. Even older ones may be reasonably
good, though the 19th century dogma on the universality of sound change is
not
so popular anymore because of contrary evidence. Studies over the last few
decades are more aware of variation within a language as a driving force of
language change. Also, in recent decades there has been more debate and
awareness of the role of language contacts in linguistic change.

If you only look at introductions to comparative Semitics, they may not
address the deeper methodological questions. Their concern is the application
of the methodology, not the methodology itself. Go for the general
introductions to the methodology.

> I know enough of language development over history that I need more
> evidence
> than just generalized calls for comparison with cognate languages and an
> appeal to authority “for those with the background to evaluate it”. I need
> evidence from Hebrew itself (more accurately in this case, direct
> transliterations from Hebrew to other languages).

Evidence from comparative Semitics, to really cover the case, takes a lot of
time to go over. First, the language relationship needs to be established.
You
cannot use the methodology on unrelated languages. Then you need to be able
to
reconstruct a proto-language and figure out sound changes from the proto-
language to the daughter languages. This is a lot of work, and requires
knowledge of the languages in question. You need to see how well your
reconstructions work and where they do not yet work, and work on the
reconstructions and sound laws until you are satisfied you know where it
works
and where not.

Having done all this work, you will have enough background knowledge to see
how an individual piece of the puzzle fits into the whole. Fortunately for
us,
we do not need to start from scratch. You can read an introduction to
comparative Semitics, and find a lot of information there. To evaluate much
anything, you should know at least two Semitic languages, preferably more.

If you are not willing to get that expertise, I do not blame you for that. It
is a lot of work. So I understand if it does not count as evidence to you, if
you feel incompetent to evaluate it. It does not mean that the baby should be
thrown out with the bath water, though.

Kimmo Huovila




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page