Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Trevor & Julie Peterson" <06peterson AT cua.edu>]

Interesting example. It requires a little fudging, though. Ke, spelled
kaf-shva, is generally glossed "like." To get "like the," you use ka,
spelled kaf-patach, with the next consonant lengthened. Lev (the shorter
form, as opposed to levav) is spelled with a tsere in the singular and hireq
in forms with suffixes. (It is spelled with a segol only when it's in
construct and connected to the following noun by a maqqef.) Kelev, on the
other hand, is spelled with two segols and no lengthened consonants. This is
a fairly standard noun pattern in BH, coming from an originally monosyllabic
stem (in this case, kalb). Since lev is a primitive noun, neither supposed
component can be treated apart from its vocalization. The fact that the
vowels don't line up is therefore a real problem.

Now, I'm not just trying to split hairs here. The real point that I want to
make is that other Semitic languages can make just as much of a case for
this special meaning. In Akkadian, "like the heart" would be ki libbi, and
"dog" would be kalbu. Aside from the vocalization, the same synthesis works.
In Ugaritic, klb can only be vocalized based on context, since the same
writing could represent either kalbu or ka libbu. (And since we have only
limited evidence for Ugaritic vocalization, all we can do is make educated
guesses about the vowels anyway.)

Not that this one example proves much of anything, but as I said before
seeing it, I have doubts about the uniqueness of Hebrew in this regard.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics