Arnaud, I'm not going to quibble about historical ascription; the lecture was 1786, the book was published in 1788. Thanks for the reference to Lyle Campbell's essay; there is, however, a reason for the common ascription to Jones position in this field (even allowing Campbell's long list of alleged "fathers/founders" (86) and quotation from Jager (88) aside). I do not know that reason.
You are clearly far more up on all this than I. Thanks for your patient instruction. I have enjoyed this thread, but we are moving far outside b-hebrew, and I must curtail my participation in it. Peace. Fred On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:56 AM, Arnaud Fournet <[email protected]>wrote: > > From: fred putnam > > > 2. Right--Hurrian was Hurro-Urartian. Sorry. > *** > No big deal. > I understood it as an obvious typo. > A. > *** > > > > 5. Ferdinand de Saussure was the first person to separate synchronic and > diachronic approaches to language. The diachronic approach, which dominated > the study of language in the 19th and early 20th centuries (following the > lead established by William Jones, 1788), > *** > Actually 1786. > > Now the idea that this period was really "diachronic" is a bit a > reconstruction of the past. These people had what I would call the "flat > screen" syndrome. Their "history" is in fact flat and the "changes" are more > immanent reformulations of the same ever-existing things. The tendency to > deal with "originally" and "at the origin", etc. is also a serious > indication that they deal with an implicitly ultra-short chronology, as if > Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Semitic or Proto-Hebrew were close to the > "origin(s)". They are closer to achronic than diachronic. > > It is also clear that the influence of Jones, who is often touted as an > initiator, is now dismissed. > I would recommend you read Chapter4 by Lyle Campbell in the Handbook of > Linguistics, especially the §4 in Chapter4. The book is (or was) available > as pdf on the web. > In addition Jones made a number of idiotic statements about Hindi being > Altaic instead of a daughter language of Sanskrit... > > A. > *** > > > > assumed that etymology rather than use determines meaning (a theory most > publicly set aside by Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961), > and decried with regard to its abuse in biblical studies by James Barr in > The Semantics of Biblical Language (also 1961). > *** > I'm not aware that Saussure may have been of any use in that field ! > Interesting. > A. > *** > > > > De Saussure's famous analogy was that the studying a language is like > analyzing game of chess: we can examine the sequence of moves that lead to a > particular position on the board (diachronic analysis), or we can study that > position (synchronic analysis), in which case the moves that brought the > game to that point are essentially meaningless--it doesn't matter how the > pieces arrived at their current positions; all that matters is where they > are and what they can do from that point on. > *** > The analogy is to some extent false as in not few cases you need to know > past moves to tell what's legal or possible. > A. > *** > > > > 7. I'm afraid that we seem to be talking past each other at this point. I > say that they are not related, you say they are (distantly). If so, it is a > distance so remote that no one has yet discovered the connection. A study > done a number of years ago (I forget the source, perhaps Hebrew Education?) > demonstrated that American seminary students who had studied even one other > Indo-European languages found it easier to learn Greek than those who had > not, whereas studying a Indo-European language--any language--did not help > those same students when they studied Hebrew. This suggests a far remove > indeed (although, as you suggest, my reading in linguistics may not be as > current as yours). > *** > Yes maybe > In all cases Semitic is nevertheless very much like IE languages > typologically. > I suppose Greek is felt to be easy because there are plenty of Greek words > in modern European languages. > > Best > > Arnaud Fournet > -- --)--------------- "We are not yet what we already are" (J. Pieper). Frederic Clarke Putnam, Ph.D. | Professor of Biblical Studies Philadelphia Biblical University | 200 Manor Avenue | Langhorne, PA 19047-2990 http://pbu.edu | 1215-702-4502 | Fax: 1-215-702-4533 | www.fredputnam.org Before printing this email, think green! _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
