My article for this past Shabbos in The Jewish Link was about the importance of teaching dikduk, as well as linguistic knowledge more broadly, applied to languages such as English or Italian.
So, for nominative vs. accusative, this can be described simply as "I" vs. "me". Understanding that I is used as the subject (I ate) while me is used as the object (She spoke to me) is useful for speaking English correctly. If taught as part of a general curriculum of linguistics, people could internalize it and not use the nominative case all the time when joined with another actor, like they do in all TV shows. "She spoke to Bobby and I".
When it comes to Hebrew, distinguishing between the nominative and accusative pronouns may now make more sense. After we encounter accusative case endings in languages like Turkish (Araba as nominative for car, Arabayı as accusative case), we can maybe recognize that the Hebrew word "et" is the accusative case marker. You can tell students this, and they have an English / scientific term to tap into. Instead of saying "et" appears (sometimes, not always) on the nouns that things are done to.
I don't know that knowing dikduk Rashis will help for Hebrew linguistics. But the broad knowledge will both allow people to approach the dikduk Rashis, and to approach even modern Semitic grammar.
I understand that it's especially important for English, especially for prescriptive grammarians, והמבין יבין.
Not convinced that it's especially important for Hebrew grammar.
In general, understanding the system of binyanim is by far the most important thing. This is correctly stressed when Hebrew is taught in the Israeli school system, as well as in all modern Hebrew textbooks.
As for understanding drashot of Chazal, which you mention in your piece: frankly, chazal are working with an entirely different system of hermeneutics. (יג מידות וכו). No linguist would describe their system as a proper system of grammar.
Again, I'm not convinced about what you're saying about dikduk rashi's. I'll admit that I haven't studied them recently. But even when I studied Rashi more consistently, I would skip them, even though I knew dikduk. The grammatical points made by Ibn Ezra and the Spanish commentators are far more relevant and consistent
Personally, I'm not convinced that Chazal only operated by the 13 middot or other enumerated lists. Just that often, later commentators think that these are the only / primary ways of understanding Chazal's words. But they themselves had a highly developed knowledge of the way the language worked, and knew when they were deviating from that. In which case it was derash instead of peshat. Or knew when a Biblical phrasing deviated, calling for interpretation.
"they themselves had a highly developed knowledge of the way the language worked, and knew when they were deviating from that".
That is a proposition which is very difficult to defend. It's true that they were likely influenced by early Greek grammarians (see saul Lieberman on this). But their system of drashot is clearly based on an "omnisignificant" way of reading the text, as elman famously described it (in a different context). See especially kugel, on the assumptions on how to read the bible in second temple times.
One of clearest instances of "over-reading" is the large number of drashot on the parsha of yevama.
There is no clear consistency in usage of hermeneutic rules. Hence, all subsequent interpreters say that we can't use the hermeneutic system of chazal "productively", because there's no real consistent way to do so
Yes, omnisignificance is definitely there. But there is also IMHO some incredible linguistic sophistication. I call these "hidden derashot". Where most people, lacking these deep grammatical knowledge, don't even see what Chazal are doing with a given derasha
For a poor example, in yesterday's daf, I think that they are cleverly misreading ve'ahavta lereacha kamocha to tap into a "beloved" sense of re'acha, and that is why it is forbidden to betroth without seeing her. Not a general non derasha. If I'm right, most people are not sensitive to that possibility and don't think it is even a derasha, just citing the peshat in the pasuk. Knowledge of different word senses, or differing available ways of reinterpreting a grammatical form, opens the possibilities. Even as they are being significance maximalist to derive an alternative reading to the peshat.
"there is also IMHO some incredible linguistic sophistication". I believe that goes too far. I'll grant you that they knew Tanach well. This was their entire basis of authority, from at least the Pharisaic period. But again, linguistics per se won't help with understanding them. Rather, they're working with a very different set of rules, which the Midot describe to an extent (gezeira shava etc).
Re your particular example: yes, plays on words is an extremely important aspect (IMO underrated, see my discussion of plays on names in chazal - מדרשי שם, in my piece on names). And playing with different senses of words. But again, that's not related to grammar per se, rather to semantics/lexicology
Important topic. Comments on the following, I added numbers:
>1) But more than that, grammatical ignorance isn’t restricted to Hebrew. Ask these students if they can provide an example of an English subjunctive. Can they distinguish between the English nominative and accusative pronouns, between a sibilant and a dental or between the active and the passive?
>2) People skip the dikduk Rashis—not just because they don’t know dikduk—but because they don’t know how grammar works and lack the vocabulary to discuss it.
My comments:
1) I'm highly interested in linguistics, and I've spent probably hundreds of hours on my own studying it. And yet, I wouldn't necessarily be able to provide examples of the terms you mention. To give a coding analogy: what you describe is akin to "white-boarding". Off-hand knowledge of technical terms isn't especially important, IMO. To be more concrete, I'd say it's important to know what a pronoun is, but less important to know off-hand the difference between nominative and accusative. Those terms are just difficult to retain, and it's not realistic, nor especially important, for the average motivated individual to remember them. Of course, it is different if one is particularly interested or are currently researching that specific linguistic topic (see my recent piece on part-of-speech tagging of Talmudic text).
Ultimately, as you hint to in the end (and as with coding), what's important is "getting a feel for the language", and less so memorizing all the technical terminology. This is especially the case with the ready access nowadays to ChatGPT, Wikipedia, etc. Of course, basic knowledge is still important, I'm simply pushing back at how detailed the off-hand knowledge of specific technical terms is.
2) I haven't looked into it especially, but my understanding is that rashi's dikduk is somewhat foreign to the modern linguistic model of Hebrew (especially in terms of the modern standard model's assumption of triliteral roots, in Semitic languages; taught in all Israeli schools). So I'm not sure that understanding Rashi is a good metric for a proper grounding in Hebrew linguistics .
So, for nominative vs. accusative, this can be described simply as "I" vs. "me". Understanding that I is used as the subject (I ate) while me is used as the object (She spoke to me) is useful for speaking English correctly. If taught as part of a general curriculum of linguistics, people could internalize it and not use the nominative case all the time when joined with another actor, like they do in all TV shows. "She spoke to Bobby and I".
When it comes to Hebrew, distinguishing between the nominative and accusative pronouns may now make more sense. After we encounter accusative case endings in languages like Turkish (Araba as nominative for car, Arabayı as accusative case), we can maybe recognize that the Hebrew word "et" is the accusative case marker. You can tell students this, and they have an English / scientific term to tap into. Instead of saying "et" appears (sometimes, not always) on the nouns that things are done to.
I don't know that knowing dikduk Rashis will help for Hebrew linguistics. But the broad knowledge will both allow people to approach the dikduk Rashis, and to approach even modern Semitic grammar.
Re nominative vs. accusative:
I understand that it's especially important for English, especially for prescriptive grammarians, והמבין יבין.
Not convinced that it's especially important for Hebrew grammar.
In general, understanding the system of binyanim is by far the most important thing. This is correctly stressed when Hebrew is taught in the Israeli school system, as well as in all modern Hebrew textbooks.
As for understanding drashot of Chazal, which you mention in your piece: frankly, chazal are working with an entirely different system of hermeneutics. (יג מידות וכו). No linguist would describe their system as a proper system of grammar.
Again, I'm not convinced about what you're saying about dikduk rashi's. I'll admit that I haven't studied them recently. But even when I studied Rashi more consistently, I would skip them, even though I knew dikduk. The grammatical points made by Ibn Ezra and the Spanish commentators are far more relevant and consistent
Personally, I'm not convinced that Chazal only operated by the 13 middot or other enumerated lists. Just that often, later commentators think that these are the only / primary ways of understanding Chazal's words. But they themselves had a highly developed knowledge of the way the language worked, and knew when they were deviating from that. In which case it was derash instead of peshat. Or knew when a Biblical phrasing deviated, calling for interpretation.
"they themselves had a highly developed knowledge of the way the language worked, and knew when they were deviating from that".
That is a proposition which is very difficult to defend. It's true that they were likely influenced by early Greek grammarians (see saul Lieberman on this). But their system of drashot is clearly based on an "omnisignificant" way of reading the text, as elman famously described it (in a different context). See especially kugel, on the assumptions on how to read the bible in second temple times.
One of clearest instances of "over-reading" is the large number of drashot on the parsha of yevama.
There is no clear consistency in usage of hermeneutic rules. Hence, all subsequent interpreters say that we can't use the hermeneutic system of chazal "productively", because there's no real consistent way to do so
Yes, omnisignificance is definitely there. But there is also IMHO some incredible linguistic sophistication. I call these "hidden derashot". Where most people, lacking these deep grammatical knowledge, don't even see what Chazal are doing with a given derasha
For a poor example, in yesterday's daf, I think that they are cleverly misreading ve'ahavta lereacha kamocha to tap into a "beloved" sense of re'acha, and that is why it is forbidden to betroth without seeing her. Not a general non derasha. If I'm right, most people are not sensitive to that possibility and don't think it is even a derasha, just citing the peshat in the pasuk. Knowledge of different word senses, or differing available ways of reinterpreting a grammatical form, opens the possibilities. Even as they are being significance maximalist to derive an alternative reading to the peshat.
"there is also IMHO some incredible linguistic sophistication". I believe that goes too far. I'll grant you that they knew Tanach well. This was their entire basis of authority, from at least the Pharisaic period. But again, linguistics per se won't help with understanding them. Rather, they're working with a very different set of rules, which the Midot describe to an extent (gezeira shava etc).
Re your particular example: yes, plays on words is an extremely important aspect (IMO underrated, see my discussion of plays on names in chazal - מדרשי שם, in my piece on names). And playing with different senses of words. But again, that's not related to grammar per se, rather to semantics/lexicology
Important topic. Comments on the following, I added numbers:
>1) But more than that, grammatical ignorance isn’t restricted to Hebrew. Ask these students if they can provide an example of an English subjunctive. Can they distinguish between the English nominative and accusative pronouns, between a sibilant and a dental or between the active and the passive?
>2) People skip the dikduk Rashis—not just because they don’t know dikduk—but because they don’t know how grammar works and lack the vocabulary to discuss it.
My comments:
1) I'm highly interested in linguistics, and I've spent probably hundreds of hours on my own studying it. And yet, I wouldn't necessarily be able to provide examples of the terms you mention. To give a coding analogy: what you describe is akin to "white-boarding". Off-hand knowledge of technical terms isn't especially important, IMO. To be more concrete, I'd say it's important to know what a pronoun is, but less important to know off-hand the difference between nominative and accusative. Those terms are just difficult to retain, and it's not realistic, nor especially important, for the average motivated individual to remember them. Of course, it is different if one is particularly interested or are currently researching that specific linguistic topic (see my recent piece on part-of-speech tagging of Talmudic text).
Ultimately, as you hint to in the end (and as with coding), what's important is "getting a feel for the language", and less so memorizing all the technical terminology. This is especially the case with the ready access nowadays to ChatGPT, Wikipedia, etc. Of course, basic knowledge is still important, I'm simply pushing back at how detailed the off-hand knowledge of specific technical terms is.
2) I haven't looked into it especially, but my understanding is that rashi's dikduk is somewhat foreign to the modern linguistic model of Hebrew (especially in terms of the modern standard model's assumption of triliteral roots, in Semitic languages; taught in all Israeli schools). So I'm not sure that understanding Rashi is a good metric for a proper grounding in Hebrew linguistics .