NAPH 2010: Diachrony & Biblical Hebrew

I had the privilege to sit in on some of the papers at the 2009 NAPH sessions on Diachrony & Biblical Hebrew. It's a fascinating topic, but it's even more fascinating as an opportunity to observe human behavior in the scholarly back-and-forth on a controversial topic where neither side has a chance at convincing the other because neither has any willingness to compromise their own positions based on any available evidence. Ahh . . . minimalists and maximalists. Scholarly apologetics. (Is that an oxymoron?) Of course, being in the middle - I would get shot at from both sides.

To a point, the historical change in Biblical Hebrew CAN be demonstrated from evidence. Dean Forbes showed that pretty convincingly in New Orleans. But, the underlying uniformity of Biblical Hebrew suggests that actually dating the texts based on the fact that historical change happened is difficult-some would say impossible. I think Ian Young, et. al., have argued a good case at least in the sense that they've drawn awareness to the problems inherent in attempting to date texts based on linguistic variation. (Ironically, my move to the center on this question was influenced by what we learned in a seminar on Linguistics & Biblical Hebrew with Dr. Miller combined with a linguistics class at UW on socio- and historical linguistics.) Below is the official call for papers issued by NAPH for their 2010 sessions.

Subject: NAPH 2010 Session at SBL Meeting: Diachrony and Biblical Hebrew

The NAPH session on Diachrony and Biblical Hebrew organized by Ziony Zevit and Cynthia Miller in 2009 will conclude with three additional sessions at NAPH 2010.  While some of the presenters will be invited, we welcome paper proposals for the 2010 sessions to be held in conjunction with the SBL meeting November 20-23, 2010 in Atlanta.

The proposal should include a description of the aspect of diachrony (or language variation or stylistics) to be examined, the methodology employed, and the language data analyzed.  Please send the proposals to clmiller2@wisc.edu and to ZZevit@ajula.edu no later than February 15, 2010.

We are in conversation with several interested publishers concerning the publication of a volume on Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew with the papers from the 2009 and 2010 sessions, along with some invited papers from leading scholars of historical linguistics and language variation.

Cynthia L. Miller, Professor and Chair, Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, 1220 Linden Drive, 1344 Van Hise Hall, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, (O): 608-262-9785, (F): 608-262-9417,clmiller2@wisc.edu

Ziony Zevit, American Jewish University, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90077-1519, (O) 310-440-1266, zzevit@ajula.edu

SBL: Transitivity & BH Niphal and Hitpael

Live blog from the SBL session on Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew: 

"Transitivity and the Biblical Hebrew Niphal and Hitpael" by Richard Benton, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Richard Benton attempts to offer insight on distinctions between Niphal and Hitpael in Biblical Hebrew. Transitivity is a salient category.

Transitivity is a relative quality - note examples between a verb like "know" vs "crush." There's a cline reflecting the level of active participation of the subject in the verbal action. The "middle" voice is less transitive than a reflexive.

Rich uses his criteria for relative transitivity to analyze the N and HtD stems in Biblical Hebrew, providing a dozen examples mainly of verbs "to turn" (HPK) and "to cover" (KSH).

N refers to an achieved state where the recipient of the action  is totally affected. HtD relates to the action (process) of bringing about the state. N consistently relates to higher transitivity than the HtD.

Rich uses a highly developed linguistic categorization based on work on transitivity by Hopper and Thompson (1980), Bakker (1994), and Kemmer (1993).

N gravitates toward 2 participant events - higher transitivity, but the HtD tends toward 1 participant events - lower transitivity.  Transitivity represents a key distinction on both the major distribution level and the minor functional level between these two stems.