Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>]

ken,

thanks for pointing out (again?) andrason's interesting paper.
linguistically speaking, his techniques are far too sophisticated
for me to comment on, at the moment; but they seem to elaborate an 
in-depth cognitive theory which, so to speak, follows the neurons as 
they process the information from words all the way to meanings. 
clearly the linguistics of the future. but i take it, it is only
a preliminary sketch. i still do not see the details that sustain 
the theory.

my main question is, though, whether all this artillery is indeed 
necessary. there is a situation that these techniques might serve
many purposes in deeper text analysis, beyond the BH verb system - for
example, automatic translation or text interactive software; but,
all the same, there is also the possibility that they will never 
be applied to the original task: the BH verb system.

the reason is that, in most languages, verbs can be studied by FORMAL
STRUCTURAL APPROACHES  which ignore 95% of the cognitive processing. in
other words, grammar IS a surface activity. i do not see why BH should
be different, even if it is still a hard nut (not for long!). 

i am not qualified enough to comment on andrason's attack on cook's 
methods, but i will make a few remarks. first, in my mind indeed it is
difficult to see how the aspectual approach alone can account for the BHVS. 
nontheless, i believe that a synthesis of existing approaches, including 
the aspectual, should be sufficient to solve the problem. something like
randall buth's pragmatic approach (unfortunately, he is no more on our
list. i wonder why...) which mixes tensual, aspectual and discourse ideas. 

> (1) Cook does not use paths as an explanation of the synchronic data; he  
still understands Biblical Hebrew grams as static products of determined
diachronic trajectories; 

it can be argued that the OT is sufficiently uniform to conduct 
sinchronic studies; besides, my impression from casual reading of 
various sources is that there are still too many unknowns on the 
temporal axis to submit the text to a true panchronic analysis. 

> (3) he retains binary opposition, which is incompatible with 
grammaticalization and path frameworks; 

incompatible with grammaticalization: yet to be shown!

one last remark: i would like to correct a mis-translation in 
one of his examples, which also changes completely the verb 
analysis there (in his p48): 

isa 51:12      מִי-אַתְּ וַתִּירְאִי   "what are you afraid of - or who"

a more correct translation would be (mekhon mamre)

יב  מִי-אַתְּ וַתִּירְאִי מֵאֱנוֹשׁ יָמוּת      12 I, 
 who art thou, that thou art afraid of man that shall die 

best
nir cohen