Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dr. Joel M. Hoffman" <joel AT exc.com>]

>These correlations might or might not be true, but the reasoning is flawed.

My reasoning, as you know, differs from yours.  I assume that lacking
evidence to the contrary, we should assume that ancient languages
follow the same rules that all modern ones do.  In this case, lacking
evidence to the contrary, we should assume that ancient Hebrew follows
the same universal patterns that have been discovered in all modern
languages.  And we do not find templatic morphology dictating
semantics.

>kibel, for example, could well be thought more emphatic than paal form.
>nizkar could well be "to receive recollection"
>giddel might reflect the burdensomeness of raising

I'd be interested to see any evidence you have for these claims.

(I'm also not even clear what "emphatic receiving" would be?  Taking?
Grabbing?)

I suppose that "dibber" could be thought of as "to stutter," because
it has a double middle radical.  But without any evidence to the
contrary, I see no reason to believe that it's not just "to speak."

-Joel Hoffman