Notes from A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar, van der Merwe, Naude and Kroeze

Historical Highlights in the Study of Biblical Hebrew

(pp.15-21)

In the 19th century linguists began to give attention to noting the similarity between languages. “By paying particular attention to the sequence of sound changes within languages that belong to the same family, sound rules were identified which could then be used to draw up a family tree of a language group. This approach to the study of language is known as historical-comparative linguistics.” (19). This approach led to many grammars throughout the 20th century.

Since the 1920s the historical-comparative method has been superseded by a structuralist approach, which understands language to be a structural system. This approach revolutionized  linguistics and led to several new theories on language. Since the 1990s, the approach as started to be seen in modern grammars. These grammars, within this approach, explain the knowledge of language like so: “the way in which sentences are used to create texts (text linguistic conventions), the conventions relating to the ways people are utterances to execute matters (pragmatic conventions) and the conventions that determin which linguistic constructions are adopted by which role-playing members of a particular society and when they are adopted (sociolinguistic conventions)” (21).

Levels of Language

(pp. 51-66)

Phonetic and phonological

“Speech sounds, used in languages to convey  meaning, are described on the phonetic level. In order to convey meaning, each language must have a system whereby speech sounds are combined.” (51)

Morphological

The morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that bears grammatical meaning. Morphemes may be affixes, clitics or words.” (51).

Syntatic

This describes how words are combined to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. (52)

Semanic and pragmatic

This refers to the minimum contribution that it makes towards an understanding of the context.  Semantics ex. The palace of the the king. (52). Pragmatics refers to the conventions according to which speakers belonging to a particular culture do various things in particular ways with language. Pragmatics ex. Look, I appoint you to rule.

Textual

Sentences make up a larger unit or text. “The communicative purpose of a text determines its form and content.” (52).