Biblical Hebrew Forum

["M & E Anstey" <anstey AT raketnet.nl>]

Gday all,

Two points regarding gender and bible software:
1. As Peter Kirk pointed out gender systems are largely arbitrary, with
little connection to extra-linguistic reality. Nevertheless, there are often
patterns in a particular language that facilitate memorisation. These can be
phonological (as in all nouns ending in -je/-tje in Dutch are neuter) or
conceptual (males are usually masculine) and so forth. Hebrew is typical of
such a mixed system. While it appears arbritary, there are regularities,
such as body parts are typically feminine (except "breast" which is
masculine!), and so forth. Another helpful one, there are only 9  (5 hapax)
words
beginning with mem in Hebrew and not ending in heh or taw that are feminine,
the other 850 are all masculine - the pattern is that deverbal nominals in
Hebrew are almost all masculine. Patterns such as these help organise the
mental lexicon of native speakers, and help Hebrew students pass exams. [To
give you an idea of how pervasive they can be in the mental lexicon and yet
remain unconscious, I once informed a native-speaker of German at university
that all german nouns ending in -ung are feminine. She did not believe me,
so I sat there for a few moments while she rattled through hundreds of
German nouns in her head. She then looked astonished and said, "You're
right! I never knew that".]

2. Bibleworks easily searches on consonants and vowels. (I think Gramcord
does as well.) So adonai type searches are easy to carry out.

Regards

Matthew Anstey
------------------------------------------
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid
"Werkgroep Informatica"
anstey AT raketnet.nl

+31 (0)20 - 444-6626 (W)
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