THE DIACHRONY DEBATE: A TUTORIAL ON METHODS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/1013-8471/2560Abstract
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.Metrics
References
Abu-Mustafa, Y, Magdon-Ismail, M & Lin, H-T 2012. Learning from data: a short course. N.p.: AMLbooks.60
Altmann, G, van Buttlar, V, Rott, W & Strauss, U 1983. A law of change in language, in Brainerd 1983:104–115.
Andersen, F & Forbes, A D 1986. Spelling in the Hebrew Bible. Rome: Pontifical Institute Press.
_______ 2012. Biblical Hebrew grammar visualized. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.
Aster, R, Borchers, B & Thurber, C 2013. Parameter estimation and inverse problems. 2nd ed. Waltham, MA: Academic Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-385048-5.00010-0
Bayley, R & Preston, D (eds) 1996. Second language acquisition and linguistic variation. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.10
Ben Zvi, E, Edelman, D & Polak, F (eds) 2009. A palimpsest: rhetoric, ideology, stylistics, and language relating to Persian Israel. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463216740
Berdan, R 1996. Disentangling language acquisition from language variation, in Bayley & Preston 1996:224–230. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.10.09ber
Biber, D & Conrad, S 2009. Register, genre, and style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511814358
Borges, J 1962. The Babylon lottery, in Borges 1962:65–72.
_______ 1962. Ficciones. New York: Grove Press.
Brainerd, B (ed.) 1983. Historical linguistics. Bochum: Studienverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer.
Breiman, L, Friedman, J, Olshen, R & Stone, C 1984. Classification and Regression Trees. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Bresnan, J & Hay, J 2008. Gradient grammar: An effect of animacy on the syntax of give in New Zealand and American English, Lingua 118:245–259. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2007.02.007
Brown, L, Cai, T & DasGupta, A 2001. Interval estimation for a binomial proportion, Stat. Sci., 16:101–133. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1214/ss/1009213286
Capps, E, Page, T & Rouse, W (eds.) 1926. Josephus. London: Heinemann.
Carr, D 2011. The formation of the Hebrew Bible: a new reconstruction. Oxford: Oxford DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199742608.001.0001
University Press.
Chambers, J & Schilling, N 2013. The handbook of language variation and change. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118335598
Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Cohen, J 1990. Things I have learned (so far), American Psychologist 45:1304–1312. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.45.12.1304
Conrad, E & Newing, E (eds) 1987. Perspectives on language and text: essays and poems in honor of Francis I Andersen’s sixtieth birthday. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.
Cook, J 2012. Detecting development in Biblical Hebrew using diachronic typology, in MillerNaudé & Zevit 2012:83–95. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781575066837-007
Crystal, D 2008. A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. 6th ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444302776
Dana, J & Dawes, R 2004. The superiority of simple alternatives to regression for social science predictions, Journal of Educational and Behavioural Statistics 29:317-331. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3102/10769986029003317
Davies, P 2003. Biblical Hebrew and the history of ancient Judaic typology, chronology and common sense, in Young 2003:150–163.
de Caën, V 2001. Hebrew linguistics and biblical criticism: a minimalist programme, JHS 3:1– 30. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2001.v3.a6
Deetz, J 1996. In small things forgotten: an archaeology of early American life. New York: Anchor Books.
Duda, R, Hart, P & Stork, D 2001. Pattern classification. 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley.
Ellegård, A 1953. The auxiliary do: the establishment and regulation of its use in English. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Fassberg, S 2013. Dead Sea Scrolls: linguistic features, in Khan 2013/I:663.
Feldman, L 1992. Josephus, in Freedman 1992/III:985–986.
Firestein, G et al. 2012. Kelley’s textbook of rheumatology. 9th ed. Philadelphia: Saunders.
Fleischman, S 2001. Methodologies and ideologies in historical linguistics: on working with older languages, in Herring et al. 2001: 33–58. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.195.03fle
Forbes, A D 1974. Forward and inverse solutions using distributed current sources, in Rush & Lepeschkin 1974:199–208. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1159/000394461
_______ 1987. Syntactic sequences in the Hebrew Bible, in Conrad & Newing 1987:59–70.
_______ 2012. The diachrony debate: perspective from pattern recognition and meta-analysis, Hebrew Studies 53:7–42. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hbr.2012.0014
_______ 2014. On dating Biblical Hebrew texts: sources of uncertainty/analytic options. Unpublished paper presented at the 2014 ISLP Symposium in St. Petersburg, Russia.61
_______ 2016. Crystallisation of Biblical Hebrew texts and diachronic inversion. Unpublished paper presented at the 2016 ISLP Symposium in Stellenbosch.
Forbes, A D & Andersen, F 2012. Dwelling on spelling, in Miller-Naudé & Zevit 2012:127–145. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5325/j.ctv18r6r7n.11
Freedman, D (ed.) 1992. Anchor Bible dictionary. New York: Doubleday.
Freedman, D, Forbes, A D & Andersen, F 1992. Studies in Hebrew and Aramaic orthography. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.
Gray, R, Atkinson, Q & Greenhill, S 2011. Language evolution and human history: what a difference a date makes, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 366:1091. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0378
Hand, D 1997. Construction and assessment of classification rules. Chichester: John Wiley.
Hastie, T, Tibshirani, R & Friedman, J 2009. The elements of statistical learning: data mining, inference, and prediction. 2nd ed. New York: Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-84858-7
Herring, S, van Reenen, P & Schøsler, L 2001. On textual parameters in older languages, in Herring et al. 2001:1–31. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.195.02her
_______ 2001. Textual parameters in older languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hock, H 2001. Genre, discourse, and syntax in early Indo-European, with emphasis on Sanskrit, in Herring 2001:163–95. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.195.09hoc
Holmstedt, R 2012. Historical linguistics and Biblical Hebrew, in Miller-Naudé & Zevit 2012:97–124. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781575066837-008
Hurvitz, A 1972. Linguistic criteria for dating problematic biblical texts, Hebrew Abstracts 14:74–79.
_______ 2000. Can biblical texts be dated linguistically? Chronological perspectives in the historical study of Biblical Hebrew, in Lemaire & Saebø 2000:143–160. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004276055_011
_______ 2006. The recent debate on Late Biblical Hebrew: solid data, experts’ opinions, and inconclusive arguments, Hebrew Studies 47:191–210. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hbr.2006.0005
Kallin, J (ed.) 1997. Focus on Ireland. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kawashima, R 2013. Stylistics: Biblical Hebrew, in Khan 2013/III:643–650.
Kerby, D 2003. CART analysis with unit-weighted regression to predict suicidal ideation from Big Five traits, Personality and Individual Differences 35:249–261. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(02)00174-5
Khan, G (ed.) 2013. Encyclopedia of Hebrew language and linguistics. Leiden: Brill.
Kister, M 2013. Ben Sira, in Khan 2013/I:260–262.
Kroch, A 1989. Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change, Language Variation and Change 1:199–244. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394500000168
Langbehn, D & Woolson R 1997. Discriminant analysis using the unweighted sum of binary variables: a comparison of model selection methods, Statistics in Medicine 16:2679–2700. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0258(19971215)16:23<2679::AID-SIM695>3.0.CO;2-1
Lemaire, A & Saebø, M (eds) 2000. Congress Volume Oslo 1998. VTSup 80. Leiden: Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004276055
Levin, B 1993. English verb classes and alternations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Levin, B & Hovav, M 2005. Argument realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511610479
Mahajan, V & Peterson, R 1985. Models for innovation diffusion. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412985093
Marquardt, W 1978. Advances in archaeological seriation, Advances in Arch. Methodology and Theory 1:257–314. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-003101-6.50014-7
Miller-Naudé, C & Zevit, Z (eds) 2012. Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781575066837
Montgomery, M 1997. A tale of two Georges: the language of Irish Indian traders in colonial North America, in Kallin 1997:227–252. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g21.15mon
Nevalainen, T & Raumolin-Brunberg, H 2003. Historical sociolinguistics: language change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Pearson Education.
Newcombe, R 2012. Confidence intervals for proportions and related measures of effect. Boca Raton: CRC Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1201/b12670
O’Brien, M & Lyman, R 1998. Seriation, stratigraphy, and index fossils. New York: Kluwer Academic.
Paolillo, J 2002. Analyzing linguistic variation: statistical models and methods. Stanford: CSLI.
Polak, F 2006. Sociolinguistics: a key to the typology and the social background of Biblical Hebrew, Hebrew Studies 47:115–162. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hbr.2006.0025
_______ 2012. Language variation, discourse typology, the sociocultural background of the Hebrew Bible, in Miller-Naudé and Zevit 2012:301–338. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781575066837-019
Polzin, R 1976. Late Biblical Hebrew: toward an historical typology of Biblical Hebrew prose. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004386709
Qimron, E 1986. The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Atlanta: Scholars Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004370050
Rendsburg, G 2003. A comprehensive guide to Israelian Hebrew: grammar and lexicon, Orient 38:5–35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5356/orient1960.38.5
_______ 2013. Biblical Hebrew: dialects and linguistic variation, in Khan 2013/I:338–341.
Rezetko, R and Young, I 2014. Historical linguistics and Biblical Hebrew: steps toward an integrated approach. Atlanta: SBL. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt14bs6gc
Robertson, I 1999. Spatial and multivariate analysis, random sampling error, and analytical noise: empirical Bayesian methods at Teotihuacan, Mexico, American Antiquity 64/1:150. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2694350
Rush, S & Lepeschkin, E (eds) 1974. Body surface mapping of cardiac fields. Basel: Karger.
Schneider, E 2013. Investigating historical variation and changes in written documents, in Chambers & Schilling 2013:57–81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118335598.ch3
Smith, K & Neiman, F 2007. Frequency seriation, correspondence analysis, and woodland period ceramic assemblage variation in the Deep South, Southeastern Archaeology 26/1:47–72.
Tikhonov, A & Goncharsky, A 1987. ill-posed problems in the natural sciences. Moscow: MIR.
Tov, E 2001. Textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
_______ 2012. Textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. 3rd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Virtanen, T 1992. Issues of text typology: narrative–a ‘basic’ type of text? Text 12:293–310.
Vulanović, R 2007. Fitting periphrastic do in affirmative declaratives, J. Quantitative Linguistics 14/3:111–126. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09296170701379369
Wainer, H 1976. Estimating coefficients in linear models: it don’t make no nevermind, Psychological Bulletin 83:213–217. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.83.2.213
Wang, W & Minett, J 2005. The invasion of language: emergence, change and death, Trends in DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2005.03.001
Ecology and Evolution 20/5:263–269.
Watson, W 2013. Poetry: Biblical Hebrew, in Khan 2013/III:151–154.
Young, I 2008. Late Biblical Hebrew and the Qumran Pesher Habakkuk, JHS, 8, Art. 25:1–38. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2008.v8.a25
_______ 2009a. Is the prose tale of Job in Late Biblical Hebrew? VT 59:606–629. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/004249309X12493729132673
_______ 2009b. What is ‘Late Biblical Hebrew’?, in Ben Zvi et al. 2009:253–268. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463216740-013
Young, I (ed.) 2003. Biblical Hebrew: studies in chronology and typology. London: T & T Clark.
Young, I, Rezetko, R & Ehrensvärd, M 2008. Linguistic dating of biblical texts. London: Equinox.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
