tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9826564.post110567163583724867..comments2023-11-02T08:13:59.718-07:00Comments on Serving the Word: Is Biblical Hebrew a Language?Jerry A.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08812948018965798765noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9826564.post-1106523281378951302005-01-23T15:34:00.000-08:002005-01-23T15:34:00.000-08:00Kaf Achas Asarah Zahav Meleah Ketores - a spoon fi...Kaf Achas Asarah Zahav Meleah Ketores - a spoon filled with incense - comes to mind as being in the Torah. Definitely there.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9826564.post-1106047303751860832005-01-18T03:21:00.000-08:002005-01-18T03:21:00.000-08:00From my limited experience in assessing linguistic...From my limited experience in assessing linguistic structure and the shape of the lexicon from written texts (from describing an extinct contact language from archival sources), one should always be aware of the limitations of one's data. Ullendorff's methodology of discovering lexical gaps is a good way for assessing how completely these sources attest the lexicon; I have done the same thing in trying to estimate the size of the lexicon of the contact language I was describing in my own work. Another approach is to calculate the proportion of hapax legomena in the corpus; the higher the proportion, the less representative the corpus usually is. It is also important to pay attention to the kinds of literary genres that comprise your sources and if they skew heavily to one genre or another, or omit certain genres entirely. For instance, I am not aware of a sizeable cache of administrative or financial records in biblical Hebrew as we have in Akkadian or Ugaritic. Similarly, we lack any representation of the technical language or jargon of various occupations, as well as for different stylistic registers than the various literary and poetic ones employed in the Hebrew Bible. On the question of language names, since the Bible reflects metalinguistically on language use so infrequently, it is quite possible that this involves another lexical gap in our sources. However labels become more useful when a language community is heterogenous, incorporating speakers of different language backgrounds, so that it becomes necessary to distinguish one language from another in day-to-day interaction. A more homogenous community has less need to label its own speech if it contrasts only with speech outside the community. I'm not sure how this might bear on the situation in Judah and in ancient Israel but it might be worth looking into.NAMUPAI'AIhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09619700984672572395noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9826564.post-1106012621789339892005-01-17T17:43:00.000-08:002005-01-17T17:43:00.000-08:00Seth, can you give a reference for the Palmyrene? ...Seth, can you give a reference for the Palmyrene? I can't find it in Hillers & Cussini. <br /><br />Thanks for a very interesting post.EMChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02505525490002421093noreply@blogger.com