Biblical Hebrew Forum

["J. Raymond Kelley" <jraykelley AT prodigy.net>]

Trevor Peterson wrote:

> Clay wrote:
>  
>
> > Yes, and a certain percentage of the time this appears to 
> > work with words where there is sufficient usage data to 
> > determine meaning. But this is a shot in the dark with 
> > hapaxlegomona and other rare words.
> >    
>
> It's not exactly a shot in the dark, unless perhaps we're talking about
> a trained marksman with rather good hearing. I have not tried to say
> that it can solve all the world's problems--only that it provides some
> clues. The fact that derivational morphology cannot give definitive
> answers does not make it altogether useless. Taken together with
> contextual clues, it just might point us to a plausible understanding of
> an unfamiliar word.
>
> Trevor Peterson
> CUA/Semitics


As long as one never forgets that the term "educated" does not 
sufficiently modify "guess" so as to eliminate the reality of the term...

Ray