The Dawn of Hebrew Linguistics: The Book of Elegance of the Language of the Hebrews.

• Author: SABAR, YONA
• Position: Review

The Dawn of Hebrew Linguistics: The Book of Elegance of the Language of the Hebrews [by SAADIA GAON]. Two volumes. Edited by ARON DOTAN. Jerusalem: WORLD UNION OF JEWISH STUDIES, 1997. Pp. 668 (paginated consecutively).

Professor Aron Dotan was fortunate to edit this fine work by Saadia Gaon (A.D. 882-942), who was the first to describe the principles of Hebrew grammar in an analytical linguistic way. Dotan's first volume (305 pp.) is an introduction to Saadia's work. Chapter one is a brief history of Saadia's tumultuous life and wanderings in Egypt (where he was born), Palestine, and Iraq (where he died). In Egypt, when he was only twenty years old, he wrote his first book, Sefer ha-Agron, a manual on Hebrew vocabulary and grammar.

Chapter two is about the history of this work of Saadia's, fragments of which are preserved in a few rare manuscripts (some parts are still missing). Dotan also discusses such topics as its various titles or names (in Hebrew and Arabic, including kitab al-luga), the time and place of its composition, the order of its chapters, and previous versions by Saadia (pp. 51-65). The most interesting section (pp. 21-29) concerns the discovery of this work, after remaining little known for almost one thousand years. Before Dotan, three scholars, A. A. Harkavi, S. L. Skoss, and N. Aloni, planned to edit the Leningrad manuscript on which this edition is based, but their plans were not carried out.

Chapter three concerns Saadia's linguistic theory, which is undoubtedly influenced by Arab grammarians, theologians, and philosophers, and through them, by the Greeks. Ironically, this book on Hebrew grammar is written in Arabic (but in Hebrew letters, as expected), another indication of the influence of Arabic and of its grammatical terminology. However, unlike Arab grammarians, whose main interest was Arabic and the Koran, Saadia's linguistic theory and rules are applicable to languages in general and not necessarily to Hebrew alone, although he considered it to he the first language (p. 103). He discusses the origin of language in general and speaks of the natural human instinct to create words (sound and meaning) by convention. The "natural" relation between a word and whatever it signifies is arbitrary and "people" (not just any individual) could easily have chosen another word for it. That is why an Arab calls a "stone" hajar and a Hebrew '[CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]even. Saadia assumes that every language has an...