Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Thanks, Dave:

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 8:46 PM, Dave Washburn 
<davidlwashburn AT gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 8:27 PM, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Dave:
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 7:22 PM, Dave Washburn <davidlwashburn AT gmail.com
> >wrote:
> >
> >
> Explanatory adequacy means looking not just at *what* happens in language,
> but how and why. Descriptive linguistics says that 1) is declarative and 2)
> is interrogative.
>
> 1) He goes to the market
> 2) Does he go to the market?
>
> Explanatory linguistics says that 1) is the base form of an English clause,
> while 2) is formed by moving the subject to second position and inserting
> the auxiliary verb. Explanatory methods go on to try and sort out the
> mechanisms that produce this change, and develop mechanisms that (more or
> less) predict what the behavior will be in other clauses. It doesn't just
> lay out a list of descriptions, it searches for the rules behind what we
> observe.
>

I thought this was descriptive linguistics, in that one cannot adequately
describe a language apart from recognizing such patterns of language use.

>
> Honestly, I wouldn't expect you to be up on most of this stuff, because
> your focus is mainly lexicography. The approaches I mentioned all deal more
> with syntax. Two very different animals!
>

Actually, both work together.

I have spent the most effort on lexicography for two reasons: 1) it is what
I first noticed as being inaccurate when using off-the-shelf lexicons and
2) without accurate lexicography, it is more difficult to impossible to
recognize patterns of syntax. However, within a few years of starting to
read Tanakh I also realized that the grammars I had been taught were also
wrong as far as syntax. The most glaring inaccuracies dealt with the
reasons for the verbal conjugations.

>
> --
> Dave Washburn
>
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>
> Karl W. Randolph.