Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 22/12/2004 09:24, Vadim Cherny wrote:

> Jack Kilmon wrote:
>
>  
>
> > One's religious opinions should be disassociated from serious discussion
> >    
> of
>  
>
> > linguistics.  I'm sorry, but ALL of the above, including the homophobia
> >    
> and
>  
>
> > "designed language" stuff makes no sense whatsoever.
> >    
>
> This brings us all the way back to the old discussion of the designed
> language. Silly as it may sound, I do adhere to this theory to considerable
> extent. It is beyond question that in many cases the third radical was added
> to the first two, forming a new root. ...
>  

It is indeed quite likely that sometime in the misty prehistory of the 
Afro-Asiatic languages, before the split between Semitic, Berber and 
Egyptian (for these groups share the triliteral root structure), many 
roots were composed from some kind of biliteral root plus a suffix 
giving a more precise semantic - perhaps much as Greek, Latin, Russian 
verbs etc are commonly made up of an often monosyllabic root with a 
prefix giving a more precise semantic. The details of this process are 
lost in the mists of time, probably irretrievably, although something 
might be possible from comparative Afro-Asiatic studies.

But this is not evidence of deliberate design, in the precursors of 
Hebrew any more than in Greek, Latin and Russian.

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