Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

>1.: I do not think that "VA- forces dagesh in the next letter."
>This is not what my theory claims. On the contrary; dagesh comes first
>and needs the auxiliary vowel [a] preceding it ("no CC allowed at the
>beginning of a syllable").

I understand.  But you still have the same fundamental problems.

VERB:  YIQTOL --> YYIQTOL --> VAYYIQTOL; but
NOUN:  MELEK --> MMELEK --> HAMMELEK

You have no way of understanding why verbs get VAV and nouns HEH.
Worse:

>I think AZ+yiqtol is a little different syntactical phenomenon. We

Why would you think that?  In both cases, YIQTOL is used for what we
commonly call the past tense.  (I happen to agree that it's simply a
default narrative form, but that isn't the point here.)

>2.: MI- forces dagesh, because it is MIN and the Nun assimilates, so
>it has no relevance. SHE-, MA-, and possible some other words do
>"force dagesh", however they don't have the same vowel as WA-, and MA-
>doesn't even always have a geminated consonant following.

My understanding is that MA- (which *does* have the same vowel as VA-)
correlates with DAGESH in exaclty the same places as VA-.

>Could you clarify a little on what you said "they do not fit your
>pattern"? Obviously, I'm not saying all cases of strong dagesh are
>autonomous, surely there are assimilations too.

My point is that if the grammar already contains prefixes that induce
DAGESH, I think the burden of proof is on you to show that VAV is not
such a prefix.

>auxiliary [h], maybe not really pronounced, just as it is in Arabic:
>they spell )AL, but usually neither Alif nor Laam are pronounced.
>With Ke-/Ka-, Le-/La-, Be-/Ba- the auxiliary [h] is not needed! It
>doesn't assimilate to B/K/L, it has never been there in the first
>place.

I have never found that sort of reasoning convincing: That's how they
do it in Arabic so it's probably how they do it in Hebrew, in spite of
appearances to the contrary.

>The problem is not: "why is there no We-hayyiqtol (there has never
>been any "[h]"), the only problem is: why do we have והמלך
>We-hammelekh, and not ומלך wammelekh?
>This, I admit, is the real problem (Galia Hatav also pointed this out

I think it's an artifact of the real problem.  The real problem is
that nouns get HA- and verbs get VA-.

>The fact that we have no *Wammelekh, only we-hammelekh, is an equal or
>smaller problem to the theory I defend, than the fact that we have no
>*Be-hammelekh, *Le-hammelekh or *Ke-hammelekh, but only Bammelekh,
>Kammelekh, and Lammelekh, is a problem to those who *don't* believe
>the theory!

I don't think so.  Suppletive combination of closed class lexical
items is well attested in the world's languages.  French DE+LES=DES,
German ZU+DEM=ZUM, etc.  Why don't you think that B+HA=BA is the same
sort of thing?  For that matter, 

>I guess this problem, then, can not be used to prove either way.
>Unless you can show why we nowhere have *Be-hammelekh, *Le-hammelekh
>or *Ke-hammelekh in MT. It must be there, at least if [ha-] is a real
>word, with a real consonant. I explain it's not there, because [ha-]
>doesn't really exist, and is certainly not a "word".

But we do have them.  We have Ke-ha-yom (Genesis 39:11, e.g.).
Be-ha-shamayim (Psalm 36:6).

>I hope, having said all this, it may move you a little bit further
>toward liking the theory. How about imagining you believe it and see
>if it works, only to abandon it if you find out it doesn't?

Indeed, that's the only way to evaluate a theory.  But I still don't
see how you get the basic data (HAMMELEK and VAYYIQTOL) without
wrongly predicting VAMMELEK or HAYYIQTOL.  


-Joel M. Hoffman
 http://www.exc.com/JoelHoffman