Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

Sorry, partly my mistake, I meant to suggest that NIMCF) here could be 
Qal "imperfect" 1st person plural. According to BDB this form is not 
found, but this would be the correct form as the 3rd person singular 
is YIMCF). It is presumably a mistake in BDB to list 2 Samuel 7:12 
(where this verb is not found) rather than 17:12 as an occurrence of 
the Niphal. Holladay's lexicon does not list this reference; you are 
apparently referring to the form NOWTAR rather than NIMCF). The Hiphil 
"imperfect" form here would surely be something like NAMCIY), so can 
hardly be relevant to the pointed text here; and the meaning of the 
Hiphil "cause to find" is hard to fit here. Your Qal meaning is 
possible, as the object is similarly dropped after ):A$ER in an idiom 
in Jdg 9:33, 1 Samuel 10:7, 25:8.

As for your "can you expand on this", I mean to say this: In all 
languages there are pairs of morphemes (especially word roots, but in 
principle the same can surely happen with affixes) which have the same 
or very similar form but different meanings. From etymological 
research we can sometimes, but not always, determine which of these 
pairs are homonyms in the sense that originally different forms have 
converged because of phonological changes, and which are in fact 
derived from the same root but have acquired different meanings by 
processes of semantic change. But where the etymological evidence is 
insufficient (as may often be the case with biblical Hebrew), my point 
is that it is impossible to tell which of these two is the case with a 
particular pair of morphemes. That is correct, surely? I suspect that 
the alleged two meanings of W:- (and of HA-?) fall into this category, 
that there is simply not enough evidence to determine whether they are 
variant meanings of one original morpheme or originally separate 
morphemes which have almost completely fallen together in form but not 
in meaning.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[5]: The form of weqatal
Author:  dwashbur AT nyx.net at internet 
Date:    22/07/1999 15:28


Peter wrote:
> The Westminster database parses NIMCA' in 2 Samuel 17:12 as "verb, 
> nifal, perfect, third person, masculine, singular". And with good
> reason, I think. If this were indeed a qal YIQTOL 2nd person plural,
> surely there should be an object "him", either a suffix on the verb or 
> 'ITTO, as the qal verb is transitive and 'ASHER does not act as an
> object, in fact (as I showed a few months ago) plays no syntactic role 
> in the subordinate relative clause but functions syntactically as part 
> of the main clause.

There doesn't necessarily need to be an explicit object, since the 
clause is focusing on the location, not the person.  And Holladay 
lists it as a hiph`il imperfect 1 pl.  I'm not sure who suggested qal 
3rd person, but it wasn't me.

<snip>

But then is
> there a discernible difference (synchronically) between two homonym
> WE-'s and two uses of the same morpheme which have developed separate 
> meanings?

Um, can you expand on this a little for me?

<snip>