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Friday, August 10, 2012

Holy: Understanding It Better Through Getting Started Right

The idea of seeing my task on this blog as defining the word in the Bible that is translated as "holy" is misleading.  It is more than that. That is really just 1/5th of a comprehensive set of tasks to make sure the holy is being understood correctly.  What I would like to introduce in this blog entry is the set of tasks that help insure a more reliable understanding of qadosh in the Hebrew and hagios in the Greek. 

In Guidelines for Barefoot Language Learning: An Approach Through Involvement and Independence, Dr. Donald N. Larson identifies 5 steps in learning to process input, when learning another language beyond our first.

He identifies these 5 steps as part of the larger task of "getting started right".  That is why this entry is particularly important.  To define a word is only one part of getting started right.  It is covering one, but one that is important because it is a component of what it means to be getting started right when learning a foreign language (or even more of your own)!

These are his five steps for processing language input or things (with some changes by yours truly):
  

First Step:  Classifying  (Amount of thing/input)

            Classify words as to their primary major class

 Second Step:  Defining  (Relationship of thing/input)

            Defining words for relationships or
            combinations of the major classes.  

Third Step:   Differentiating  (Action of thing/input)

            Differentiate words so that they can be
            distinguished with ease.

 Fourth Step:  Mapping  (Thing of thing/input)

            Map the range of all the classes that a word
            has based on its associations. 

 Fifth Step:  Establishing Sets  (Whole of thing/input)

            Establish a set by discovering the semantic
            features common to a set of words.

I have not found these steps that Dr. Don N. Larson outlines anywhere else in my reading of linguistics texts.  I know that one of his colleagues describes him as someone who was very good at making the complex simple.  I think this set of steps may outline in a more clear way what Dr. Eugene A. Nida was doing along with Louw in developing a lexicon for New Testament Greek build around what are called semantic domains.  I believe that Larson's "Establishing Sets" is the equivalent of Nida's semantic domains. 

Please note that defining a word is step 2 out of this set of 5 steps toward processing input from another language.  That means that simply defining holy by itself is incomplete.  It is really important that we understand that we naturally do all these steps, when we learned our first language whether conscious or not.  The other thing is that in developing these steps further, I have found that each step helps in understanding the other steps. 

Let me also show you these steps in a more simplified picture format:





It is also true that some of what I have said previously in some of my entries will have to be amended, because I was guilty of mixing these steps together rather than "differentiating" them as in step 3 above.  This is easily done because most of what I have read in both exegesis and linguistics has a tendency to develop some valid points, but the organization is more eclectic than well-organized.  Larson, I agree, had a great ability to organize things well. 

So as I develop my points about the meaning of qadosh, etc. in Hebrew and hagios, etc. in Greek, I hope you will see me following Larson's strategy more closely in the future.  The coming steps are to actually practice what Larson preaches.  For that, I may have to reach out to others to make his theory more practical.  I am thinking that Dr. Betty Sue Brewster at Fuller Theological Seminary might be particularly helpful in that regard due to her connections with Dr. Larson and his influence in the book that she co-authored with her husband, Language Acquisition Made Practical (otherwise known as LAMP).   I recommend their text very highly for knowing how to learn a new language.  And in the end, that is what I am doing in learning and studying Hebrew and Greek. 


Sincerely,

Jon

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