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b-hebrew - Re: Re[4]: vav conversive

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  • From: "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Re[4]: vav conversive
  • Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 13:24:44 -0700


Hi Peter,
> Thank you, Dave, for your answer. Yes, maybe do need to look at a
> proper linguistic definition of "word" apart from the written
> language. The problem seems to be that practical linguists too often
> duck the issue and follow the white spaces in the orthography. I fear
> that if we look at theories we end up with phonological words,
> grammatical words and semantic words, each no doubt in various
> flavours, and they don't match up with one another. I remember hearing
> "clitic" defined as something like "something about which people can't
> decide if it's a separate word". We may have a lot of such clitics in
> Hebrew - even proper names, if we look at Genesis 7:13 W:$"M-W:XFM,
> two names joined together in one phonological word. Your semantic or
> lexical approach to defining "word" is helpful, but it is far from the
> only possibility.

Agreed. Is a compound word one or two? (or more, in the case of
German...) My own current and very tentative view is that the
answer depends on native speakers' intuitions, and barring that
(e.g. ancient Hebrew, Akkadian, Ugaritic or whatever) the question
of whether something can be lexically defined is the determining
factor. E.g. "keyboard" is a compound word made up of "key" and
"board." Each part has a meaning, "key" being an object used for
unlocking something, and "board" being a type of surface (overly
simplified for the sake of bandwidth). But the compound
"keyboard" is much more than the sum of its parts, and thus I
would consider it a separate word even though some people write it
as two ("key board") or hyphenated ("key-board"). Still, I won't go
to the stake (or even the woodshed) for this idea, and am willing to
hear and experiment with others.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"Ich veranlassenarbeitenworken mein Mojo."




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