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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Lexical question

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  • From: K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • To: B-Hebrew List <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Lexical question
  • Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 22:26:01 -0700

Dave:

On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 9:47 AM, <dwashbur AT nyx.net> wrote:

> This link is so far beyond reaching, I'm not sure English has a word for
> it.
>
> Homonyms happen in most every language of which I am aware, including
> Hebrew. There
> is no need for this kind of linguistic back-flip to try and explain them
> away. The simplest
> answer is usually the most likely to be correct.
>
>
> Dave Washburn


All languages have homonyms.

What confuses the issue in Hebrew is because it does not show vowels, there
are many homographs that are not true homonyms. An example would be )X,
which has four meanings, probably each pronounced a different way. We don’t
know for certain, but the probability that all four words had the same
pronunciation is about nil.

Then there are some false homonyms, proposed roots that not necessarily
existed. (Not all Hebrew words necessarily had a Hebrew root, how many were
at one time or another loan words from other languages? This would most
likely be true of many nouns, referring to imported items.)

Finally, there are some homonyms recognized in Hebrew based on lexicographic
methodology. Because I look at function and action, I see far fewer homonyms
than the lexicographers who analyze according to form, e.g. according to
semantic domains.

In closing, because of a quirk in the Biblical Hebrew writing system, namely
consonants only with no vowels, homographs are neither automatically from
the same root, nor are they automatically homonyms if not from the same
root. There is a third option, namely that they can be different words with
different pronunciations but the lack of vowels causes them to be written
the same way. And because vowels were not preserved, we don’t know how many
homographs were also homonyms.

The example I used to open this thread shows the steps I used before I would
accept that a homograph could possibly be from the same root.

Karl W. Randolph.




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