[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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