[b-hebrew] The Meaning of brkh

Medina, Vincent VMedina at cbcag.edu
Tue Jan 21 14:56:11 EST 2003


Wes:

 

To attempt to derive the meaning of brk "to bless" from other roots with
the same spelling is to commit the infamous "root fallacy" (the mistaken
assumption that the meaning of words is derived from their roots). The
other roots you mention which mean "spring" or "knee" are merely
homonyms, i.e. words which are spelled and sound alike but have distinct
meanings. These occur in every language. In English the word "bank" and
refer to the land at the edge of a body of water or a financial
institution. It would be a mistake to believe that one of these meanings
is derived from the other. There are numerous other examples in your
Hebrew lexicon of different roots with the same spelling. They should
also be treated as distinct lexemes. Hope this helps.

 

Vince

 

Solo Deo Gloria

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/attachments/20030121/b850c27c/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 4389 bytes
Desc: image001.jpg
Url : http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/attachments/20030121/b850c27c/attachment.jpe 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 7830 bytes
Desc: image002.gif
Url : http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/attachments/20030121/b850c27c/attachment.gif 


More information about the b-hebrew mailing list