[B-Greek] Nature of the Greek language
Trevor Peterson
06PETERSON at cua.edu
Mon Dec 8 07:23:07 EST 2003
>===== Original Message From Luke Hartman <luke at mrturtle.com> =====
>In a homiletics book I recently read (Homiletical Plot), the author
>sees Greek as very rigid. a language where words had definitions,
>contrasted with Hebrew, a verb-based language where words were
>descriptions. (he would thus favor a Semitic thought-process for his
>craft.) How accurate is his observation in describing the languages?
>Would any of you have anything to add by way of addition or critique?
>Perhaps the question could better be asked, "What are the fundamental
>differences between Greek and Hebrew as languages?"
This sounds like an attempt to say something about Greek and Semitic
thought-processes, rather than the actual languages involved. IMO, the
tendency to substantiate this kind of assertion with linguistic features is
misguided. In this particular case, I suspect that the author is making claims
about derivational morphology in Hebrew that he (or she) does not really
understand. Beyond that, I don't even know what it's supposed to mean that
Greek words have definitions while Hebrew words are descriptions. The only
thing that comes to my mind is the distinction between an identifying and a
descriptive nominal clause, so perhaps the idea here is that Greek actually
defines things, while Hebrew only describes them. If it is, I think a more
profitable distinction might relate to how texts from different areas and
cultures reflect different methods of processing knowledge. Bottero has done
some speculation in this area, looking particularly at Akkadian list-texts.
As for actual linguistic differences, there are a lot of things that could be
said. Hebrew, like other Semitic languages, has what are called emphatic
consonants, which are generally unparalleled in Greek (or any IE language
apart from Semitic influence?). It has a fairly regular derivational system of
root and pattern that I think is probably characteristic of Semitic languages
in general. Hebrew generally uses a smaller range of conjunctions than Greek,
which tends to make it look paratactic. (I say "look," because Hebrew has its
own means of creating subordination apart from the use of distinct
subordinating conjunctions.) There are more features we could look at, but
they're mostly of this sort (linguistic) rather than the sort that I think
your author wanted to point out.
Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics
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