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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.Ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Passive/reflex verbs don't take suffixes??
  • Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 23:00:30 +0100

On 11/09/2004 16:02, Harold R. Holmyard III wrote:

Dear Peter,

Yesterday I wrote:

Ps 42:5 looks like an odd form.

I apologize. i was looking at the English verse numbering and so not at the right Hebrew verse. The problem with Weingreen's assertion, I think, is that the Hithpael is not always either strictly passive or reflexive. Ps 42:5 is a place where it seems to have a more active meaning. Note this comment in GKC #54f(c) with regard to the Hithpael and reciprocal action: "It more often indicates an action less directly affecting the subject, and describes it as performed with regard to or for oneself, in own's own special interest. Hithpael (see Niphal #51e) in such cases readily takes an accusative."

A number of verse references are given at this point, one of them being Isa 14:2, which you have in your list of suffixed verbs. The same would probably be the case for Ps 42:5, if a repointing to Piel is not correct, as DCH suggests might be the need, among other suggestions. But the reciprocal idea of the Hithpael as described above seems applicable to leading others to the temple.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard

Harold, thank you for looking at these verses in more detail than I had time to do - I took longer than I had intended just extracting the list of references.

I must say I was wondering whether Weingreen's comment as quoted by Chris:

"It will be understood that ONLY
the active verbs can take suffixes, niphal, pual, hophal and hitpael are
passives/reflexives and cannot govern an object..."

was intended to be a morphological or a semantic comment. Niphal, pual, hophal and hitpael are morphological categories, and it is possible that the morphological rules do not allow object suffixes to be attached to these morphological forms. However, it seems more likely that Weingreen's comments are intended to be understood as 1) "niphal, pual, hophal and hitpael are passives/reflexives"; 2) passives/reflexives "cannot govern an object", therefore 3) object suffixes are not found with niphal, pual, hophal and hitpael. The problem with this is not with the reasoning that 1) and 2) imply 3), but rather with the premises 1) and perhaps 2). For the rule in 1) is by no means invariable.

Also the rule in 2) is doubtful: in principle, a passive form of a ditransitive verb (one which takes two direct objects) can take a direct object. This is certainly true in English e.g. with "call": "He calls me Peter" is an active verb with two objects, and "I am called Peter" is a passive form with one object. And exactly the same occurs in Hebrew with the niphal of QR', for example in Gen 35:10 "your name will no longer be called Jacob". This form does not happen to occur with an object suffix, but in principle it could.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/






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