Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - RE: [b-hebrew] lexicography

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] lexicography
  • Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 14:57:39 -0500

>===== Original Message From "Julie Devall" <krena_li_mara AT hotmail.com> =====
>Also relatedly, I'm wondering why JM call dibber a Denominative Piel, which
>is "not a grammatical, but lexical category."

The idea here (denominative) is that the verb comes from the noun
(word-->produce a word), rather than the other way around (as we almost
assume
by default in Hebrew lexicography, so speak-->spoken thing/word). This is a
lexical category, because it is a matter of how the word was derived in the
past, not how a speaker would regularly generate it. (This is the sort of
difference I was talking about earlier, when I called for distinguishing
between derivational and inflectional morphology.)

>And behind it lies "a
>related, and assuredly more primitive, noun: dibber to speak (vs. davar)".
>Trevor, can you shed any light on why davar is "assuredly more primitive?"

I'm not sure exactly what their reasoning is, but I would say it's probably
more primitive because of a few factors. One is that the form of the noun
doesn't look like it was derived from a Piel verb. Given the distribution of
the different verb binyanim, I think it's pretty safe to say that the Piel is
the primary verb, and the Qal was probably derived from it at some point.
(The
Qal appears only in the infinitive and participle, and it is considerably
less
frequent.) A denominative verb can be in just about any binyan, but Piel is
one of the more common forms that results. It might also be a consideration
that outside of Canaanite (and some Aramaic that's probably subject to Hebrew
influence), the verbal root dbr has a completely different meaning.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page