Yigal katav: > As interesting as this discussion has been, its focus seems to have > shifted from Hebrew to Aramaic.
shalom Yigal Thank you for mentioning focus. There were two points being discussed, a. whether or not a High and a Low Hebrew could exist if a Low Aramaic also existed. and b. details on Aramaic itself. Anyway, it is pretty clear to 20th century mishnaic Hebrew scholarship that a Low Hebrew existed. This is not a debate within the field and among those with good control of the data. (Klaus Beyer is not included, of course. He has argued [1984 and later], rather illogically for those aware of multilingual environments, that if Aramaic can be shown in various parts of the Land, that there was no room for a Low Hebrew.) The alternative starts to look kind of funny: that two noticeably different High Hebrews were developed and used. It goes completely against the grain of what we know about diglossic situations with distinct dual registers. The 'b' question above is irrelevant to the discussion of High and Low Hebrew. Randall -- Randall Buth, PhD www.biblicallanguagecenter.com Biblical Language Center Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
