Just a Little Bend on the S-Curve: The Rise and Fall of Linguistic Change in Post-Classical Biblical Hebrew

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-216
Author(s):  
Tania Notarius
2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean A. Forbes

In a recent essay published in this journal, I illustrated the limitations one may encounter when sequencing texts temporally using s-curve analysis. I also introduced seriation, a more reliable method for temporal ordering much used in both archaeology and computational biology. Lacking independently ordered Biblical Hebrew (BH) data to assess the potential power of seriation in the context of diachronic studies, I used classic Middle English data originally compiled by Ellegård. In this addendum, I reintroduce and extend s-curve analysis, applying it to one rather noisy feature of Middle English. My results support Holmstedt’s assertion that s-curve analysis can be a useful diagnostic tool in diachronic studies. Upon quantitative comparison, however, the five-feature seriation results derived in my former paper are found to be seven times more accurate than the single-feature s-curve results presented here. 


2002 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-349
Author(s):  
S. Noah Lee

AbstractBiblical Hebrew like other languages exhibits diachronic linguistic changes. One such linguistic change observable in the Hebrew Bible is the use of the definite article in the development of some biblical toponyms. What is behind the different forms of the same place-name, such as 'the Mount Gilboa' ( ) in 1 Sam. xxxi 1 vs. 'Mount Gilboa' ( ) in 1 Ch. x 1? It is observed that the use or absence of the article is by no means an accident but the result of a semantic change over a long period of use by the linguistic community. Furthermore, the use of the article in the development of toponyms shows the relative dates of writing of biblical books. The outcome of the study indicates the archaic character of the books of the Pentateuch and Joshua, and relative late dates of writing of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 881-926
Author(s):  
Dean A. Forbes

Traditional approaches to the linguistic dating of Biblical Hebrew (BH) have produced many innovative results. However, because of inattention to the disruptive effects of textual noise and to the overfitting of textual features to restricted texts, these results have exhibited limited generalisability. In recent years, there have been proposals to include additional parameters in analyses. Lately, a construct from innovation theory, the s-curve, has been informally taken up by a few BH diachrony analysts. Not surprisingly, initial results have been approximate and provisional due to the idealised assumptions made. Future work along these lines must provide for features that are non-monopolising, non-monotonic, and fluctuating. Concurrently, the methods and inferences associated with traditional analyses have been questioned. For example, Young, Rezetko and Ehrensvärd have asserted that attempts to date biblical writings linguistically are ab initio illegitimate. I disagree.


1976 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Johnson

ABSTRACTAlthough the rates of changes in language are customarily described in relative terms, this paper presents a method of quantifying the rate of a given change during a specific time period. Utilizing the results of recent studies of sound change in progress, the Rate of Change Index is applied to the data for the purpose of indicating precisely the speed of these changes. Also measured in this manner are the rates of change of a variable in different phonetic contexts and among different social classes. The comparisons made here lend support to two important theories: that linguistic change follows an S-curve and that change proceeds more rapidly in urban than in rural areas. The Index contributes, then, to an inductive model of sociolinguistic change. It is also suggested that the Index can be applied to syntactic and lexical changes as well. (Linguistic change, Sociolinguistics, Phonology.)


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bill T. Arnold ◽  
John H. Choi
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Bill T. Arnold ◽  
John H. Choi
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Elena Makarycheva

The aim of the article is to develop a method for calculating water losses from irrigation channels in determining the permeability of rock in the zone of filtration flow on the basis of the law of infiltration A.N. Kostyakov using the results of studies of free filtration from pits and foundation pits in loess loams. Pressure movement of water in irrigation canals is subject to the laws of two-phase flow, in which – in contrast to the Darcy law for the zone of saturation plays an important role, the volume and its change in time. The filtration rate (VF) increases with increasing rock moisture (θ) along the S-curve, while the pressure gradient (I = dh/dz) decreases. The dependences of these parameters on the pressure are represented by power functions, and their product CDP = VFI does not change in time and can serve as a characteristic of the filtration flow under the channel. When installing paired piezometers near the water chore line in the channel and determining the graph I(t) by the value of the twophase flow constant CDP, it is possible to calculate the filtration rate at a number of times and the water losses during unsteady filtration. Water losses from the channels at equilibrium humidity increases with increasing head according to the formula A.N. Kostyakova, in which the water permeability of rocks is characterized by a steady filtration rate at a head of 1.0 m, and the gradient is the function of pressure. The application of the proposed method of calculating losses in the design of irrigation systems will increase the reliability of the justification of the volume of anti-filtration measures and the forecast of the groundwater level.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Zaidan Ali Jassem

This paper traces the Arabic origins or cognates of the “definite articles” in English and Indo-European languages from a radical linguistic (or lexical root) theory perspective. The data comprises the definite articles in English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Latin, Greek, Macedonian, Russian, Polish, Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, Persian, and Arabic. The results clearly indicate that five different types of such articles emerged in the data, all of which have true Arabic cognates with the same or similar forms and meanings, whose differences are due to natural and plausible causes and different routes of linguistic change, especially lexical, semantic, or morphological shift. Therefore, the results support the adequacy of the radical linguistic theory according to which, unlike the Family Tree Model or Comparative Method, Arabic, English, German, French, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit not only belong to the same language family, renamed Eurabian or Urban family, but also are dialects of the same language, with Arabic being their origin all because only it shares the whole cognates with them all and because it has a huge phonetic, morphological, grammatical, and lexical variety. They also manifest fundamental flaws and grave drawbacks which plague English and Indo-European lexicography for ignoring Arabic as an ultimate ancestor and progenitor not only in the treatment of the topic at hand but in all others in general. On a more general level, they also show that there is a radical language from which all human languages stemmed and which has been preserved almost intact in Arabic, thus being the most conservative and productive language


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. H. Hardy

Biblical Hebrew lqr't is situated at the intersection of grammatical categories as a content item and a function word. The analysis of any given token is confounded by this diversity and its variously encoded denotations: the infinitive construct “to meet” and the polysemous prepositions, the directional TOWARD and the adversative AGAINST. The usage in Exodus 14:27 (wmsrym nsym lqr'tw) prompts a number of different analyses. Interpretations include: hoi de aigyptioi ephygon hypo to hydor (LXX); wmsry' -'rqyn lqwblh (Peshitta); fugientibusque Ægyptiis occurrerunt aquæ (Vulgate); “the Egyptians fled at its approach” (NJPS); “the Egyptians fled before it” (NRSV); and “the Egyptians were fleeing toward it” (NIV). This study examines lqr't by comparing a range of grammatical methods. These approaches centre evolutionary growth (philology), syntagmatic and paradigmatic features (structuralism), functional usage (eclectic linguistics), and cross-linguistic development (grammaticalisation) in order to explore questions of the origin, development, and usage of lqr't. The combined approaches help to situate and construct an archaeology of linguistic knowledge and a genealogy of philological change of language and text.


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