Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kimmo Huovila <kimmo.huovila AT kolumbus.fi>]

On lauantai 08 lokakuu 2011, K Randolph wrote:
> I don’t think I’m doing a total rejection of the methodology, rather I am
> emphasizing that there are limits to what the methodology can do. It is not
> all powerful.

Thanks for the clarification. I think in this we agree as well as those 
working 
in the field of historical Semitics.

> 
> To give an example from another family group: Japanese and Korean are
> cognate languages, however far enough apart that they are not mutually
> understandable. For centuries Korean has been a CVC language. Only in the
> last few decades as Japanese borrows loan words from other languages is
> Japanese becoming a CVC language after centuries of being a CV language.
> From what I have been told, Japanese was the only CV language in its
> language family. If we had only the cognate languages as clues, would we
> have learned that about Japanese?

Yes, it is possible that one language changes its syllable structure.

> 
> >
> > 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.
> >
> 
> The best evidence is from within the language itself.

True as long as we know the language itself well. This is like a working on a 
jigsaw puzzle. We don't have all the pieces (we have no records of classical 
Hebrew syllable structures), so we must look at what kind of piece would fit. 
We may not have all that much direct pre-exile Hebrew evidence on syllable 
structures, and no audio recordings from that era, so we should look for 
other 
evidence.

When we look at how names were transliterated in the LXX (pre-Masoretic, but 
post-exile), it looks like there were CVC structures. That would probably 
count as more direct, language-internal evidence (at least the translators 
chose Greek CVC equivalents), unless it is considered too late.

> Where there are
> records, the history can be established as far as the records extend.
> Anything beyond is speculation. It may be guided speculation so it’s not
> just a shot in the dark, but how do you know that the guides are the right
> ones?

With different interpretations competing for our analysis of facts, 
ultimately 
I don't think we can always make a clear distinction between speculation and 
facts. Some things we know with greater confidence than others. So, how do we 
know which guides to follow? I would say that the pieces should go well 
together, including individual language analyses and historical and 
comparative linguistics. If the other cognate languages don't share a feature 
that has been proved for one language, then it is likely to be an innovation 
within that language. But in the absence of any evidence in that direction, 
the best working hypothesis is that there is not that innovation. I think 
this 
is applicable with syllable structures, too.

> 
> >
> > …
> >
> 
> Was there ever a proto-Semitic language?

Like I said, proto-Semitic can be considered a theoretical construct. It 
attempts to approximate a real phase in language history, but I do not claim 
that there ever were native speakers of proto-Semitic.

> 
> The Flood happened around 2500 BC, the Tower of Babel where God mixed up the
> languages some time later when a sufficient population recovery happened
> after the Flood, probably a couple of centuries later. Was there enough time
> from the Tower of Babel to Abraham to account for all the different
> languages within the Semitic language family, especially when taking into
> account that people lived so long at that time? Or when God mixed up the
> languages, he mixed up some a lot and others not as much, and some within
> families but already separate enough as not to be mutually understandable?
> We don’t have records of these proto languages, did they ever exist?

This opens a can of worms, and I try to tread carefully within the parameters 
of the list.

If we assume the history you mention above, we have a few choices. One is to 
think of the time between the Tower of Babel to Abraham to be an intensive 
time of linguistic development. Languages change faster when the society 
experiences changes. I would think a language may split into two different, 
mutually ununderstandable languages within a few centuries in the right 
circumstances. Think about the changes in the English language about a 
millennium ago, for example. Compare 1000 CE English with 1600 CE English, 
and 
think of another language that might have developed in a different direction. 
You raise the question of longevity. That is a valid point in this scenario. 
In unusual circumstances with small populations of natives language variation 
might have been much more prevalent than today. And even nowadays, small 
scale 
linguistic changes occur all the time within the life of an individual. So 
these long-living people might end up being multi-dialectal, speaking one 
dialect with their children and another with their parents.

With lots of people from different language groups interacting with each 
other 
might have led to a lot of pidginization and borrowing. The need to learn new 
languages may have been a factor, too. If so, then we should keep in mind a 
possibility of massive language contact at the early stages. But this would 
also be speculation, since we would not know for sure of the quantity of 
interference from other languages at that time under this scenario.

Another alternative to consider within the assumptions you expressed is to 
note that the text nowhere says how the languages were confounded, whether it 
was a supernatural speeding up of normal language change in some cases, or 
whether all new languages were unrelated to each other. There is nothing in 
the text to disprove (or prove) the idea that people immediately after the 
tower of Babel spoke their respective Semitic langauges. In other words, the 
text does not disprove (or prove) the idea that the languages may have been 
born as cognates with a reconstructable proto-language. If we choose this 
view, our observations on the Semitic languages should convince us that in 
some way they are cognates. There may (or may not) be some unexplicable 
exceptions in this view, but generally speaking comparative Semitics as a 
tool 
is not in danger.

Regardless of which of the two views above one may subscribe (and in no way 
do 
I imply that they are the only options), there was proto-Semitic. In the 
first 
scenario, there actually were people that spoke a language very close to 
proto-Semitic. In the second, no one historically spoke it, but nevertheless 
it exists as a useful theoretical construct that will help us with Semitic 
studies.

I suspect that many on this list don't choose either of the views above. But 
for the working linguist, I don't think that whether one chooses either of 
the 
views above, it changes the fact of a Semitic language group and 
the usefulness of comparative Semitic studies. I think for these kinds of 
questions as the syllable structure, it remains a useful tool in any case.  
While of course one can argue that it is not 100% evidence, to dismiss its 
evidence, one needs proper counter-evidence.

> 
> My interest in historical reconstruction started with a question of the
> alphabet: was it original to Hebrew or did Hebrew adopt it from another
> language? If originally from Hebrew, then Hebrew originally had only 22
> consonantal phonemes, and the theories from the historical linguists are
> wrong. I think the evidence from history is that the Hebrew alphabet is
> original to Hebrew. We have inscriptional evidence of the Hebrew alphabet in
> use during the time of the Egyptian sojourn before the Exodus.
> 
> My question concerning whether Biblical Hebrew was originally a CV language
> also stems from the same historical question of the alphabet. The reason is
> that some of the words would not have been pronounceable without intervening
> vowels, e.g. Rivka would have been pronounced as Rebeqah (or even Rebeqahe)
> with the e between the b and q an unstressed shewa.

Are you perhaps referring to air flow after the release of b and before the 
full closure of q? (Even in this case, the air flow can be pronounced as 
unvoiced.) Transitional sounds between phonemes do not affect syllable 
structure nor should they be treated as phonemic. Phonology works at a 
different level of abstraction from transitional sounds between phonemes. 

> 
> Yes, it would be a lot of work, and even before starting it it looks wrong
> from a historical standpoint, so why go through the effort? And it would
> interfere with my main effort of trying to get a feeling for Biblical Hebrew
> from the inside out.

Sometimes to get really good at one thing, it is important to take time to 
develop also skills closer to the margins of relevance to the main task. Like 
Randall has often said, if the main goal is reading, learning to speak will 
not be wasted effort. But I agree that large doses of comparative Semitics 
may 
not be the best thing to get a feeling of Biblical Hebrew. Some bits and 
pieces may enliven your journey through Hebrew, though. Some later Hebrew is 
very good, as well as some earlier Hebrew would be, if we just had lots of  
texts from an earlier time.

I realize that this email of mine is full of all kinds of speculation. Some 
may find this irrelevant. My main point is that benefiting from comparative 
Semitics is not dependent on one particular world view or view of history, 
theology, or hermeneutics, though I do not wish to say that these are 
completely irrelevant. I don't see your view of history as contrary to the 
methodology of comparative Semitics or to the existence of proto-Semitic.

Kimmo Huovila