Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT sil.org]

It seems that in trying to distinguish "adjective" and "participle" 
here we are trying to force Hebrew into Indo-European grammatical 
categories. There are many languages in the world which do not have 
adjectives as a separate grammatical category, they can all be 
considered as participles of stative verbs. Hebrew may not go so far, 
but many at least of its adjectives are linked closely to stative 
verbs - in other cases perhaps only the participle forms are attested 
in the limited surviving texts. So perhaps it would be better to treat 
at least these adjectives under discussion as participles of stative 
verbs in every case, rather than try to make artificial distinctions 
and speculate on transformations from one meaning to another. OK, 
these adjectives are not morphologically the same as non-stative verb 
participles either, but this would be only one of a number of 
morphological differences.

Peter Kirk