Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Galia's response drew me back to the following, to support her 
suggestion that WAYYIQTOL can be analysed as W-AY-YIQTOL.

Look more closely: the forms ARE close. Galia wrote the morpheme in 
question as AY, but really it is A+dagesh as we see from the first and 
second person wayyiqtol forms. The Hebrew article is regularly 
HA+dagesh, but this is reduced to A+dagesh after the prefixed B-, K- 
and L-. Admittedly the article is not reduced after the copula W-, but 
the difference is reduced from "not even close" to a minor 
irregularity like "H is elided after W in verb forms but not in noun 
forms". This would be easily explained if there is any mileage in 
Galia's suggestion of two homophone W- prefixes (one perhaps 
originally P- as Arabic F- ??), one of which elides the H and the 
other does not. But there could be an explanation even without this 
approach.

Peter Kirk.



______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Verb forms in lists (was Re: Wayyiqtol)
Author:  zellmer AT cag.pworld.net.ph at internet 
Date:    22/02/1999 21:21

<snip>
To say, as you did
later, that the *AY* has the same result as adding the definite 
article to a noun does
not really demonstate a thing, since the forms are not even 
close.
<snip>