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b-hebrew - Re: WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE GENDER OF NOUNS

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  • From: "Reinhard G.Lehmann" <lehmann AT mail.uni-mainz.de>
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE GENDER OF NOUNS
  • Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 07:41:38 +0100


An exhaustive treatment of the origins for the assignment of gender to
nouns and the
reasoning behind it has been made by Diethelm Michel, Grundlegung einer
hebraeischen Syntax. Vol. 1: Sprachwissenschaftliche Methodik. Genus und
Numerus des Nomens, Neukirchen 1977.
The point made by Michel is that the -a/at and -ot endings originally
were to mark nomina unitatis and the Ø and -im endings originally were
to mark collectiva. Overlapping of that system with the natural gender
of living beeings ('sexus') and the classes of 'small' ("dienend") vs
'big' ("herrschend") results in the assignment of actual noun genders.

A short description is, as I remember, somewhere in Nahum Waldman, The
recent study of Hebrew, but I actually do not have that volume at hand.

Reinhard G.Lehmann
--
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Dr. Reinhard G. Lehmann
Lecturer for Classical Hebrew and Old Aramaic
Johannes-Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz
D - 55099 Mainz
tel: +49 - 6131 - 39 3284
mailto:lehmann AT mail.uni-mainz.de
look at http://www.uni-mainz.de/~lehmann/link.html
*****************************************






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