Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Christian Hoffmann <christian.hoffmann AT wsl.ch>]

Dear haverim,

Not so long we discussed the choice of qatal as the paradigmatic stem for
Hebrew verb grammar. We went through all the possible combinations, sorting
out unwanted consonants, like

aleph, he, waw, khet, yod, ayin, resh: weak letters -> weak stems, rarely
regular
beth, kaph, pe: change of hardness with veth, khaph, fe
mem: is also a prefix
nun, taw: occur in weak stems

As a result, letters like

gimel, dalet, zayin, tet, lamed, samekh, tsade, qoph, sin, shin.

will remain. qatal is one possible combination. I don't remember which else
seemed attractive.

Does anybody know a written source for this kind of reasoning?

Shalom
--christian

 
Dr.sc.math.Christian W. Hoffmann
Mathematics and Statistical Computing
Landscape Modeling and Web Applications
Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL 
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CH-8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland
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