Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Herman:

Here is one place where we may have to agree to 
disagree, but hopefully a friendly disagreement.

No I do not find the argument according to 
gemination convincing, nor that concerning the 
Piel/Pual verbal forms. It could be that I am 
too thick to understand the ramifications, or 
my reaction that scholarly practice often makes 
mountains out of molehills makes me overlook a 
true mountain.

I know that the evidence for my theory, or more 
correctly it should be called a hypothesis, is 
weak. And it could very well be wrong. But so 
far I have not seen what I consider convincing 
evidence contrary to it.

I really need to consider this more and get more 
evidence before coming out more strongly.

Thanks for your response.

Karl W. Randolph.

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Herman Meester" <crazymulgogi AT gmail.com>
> 
> Dear Karl,
> 
> We may not end up agreeing about the "CV syllable only" character of
> biblical Hebrew that you, unlike the communis opinio, think is
> possible.
> To your theory I add just a few more objections - that I trust won't
> fail to convince you.
> 
> There are many bi-consonantal roots where the second consonant is
> lengthened/doubled. These could theoretically be described, therefore,
> as triconsonantel roots. Take SBB סבב. The problem for your theory is
> that Hebrew both has forms like sovev סובב, s'vavuni 
> סבבוני, or lisbov
> לסבב on the one hand, and sabbuni סבוני, y'subbenu 
> יסבנו, or sobbi סבי
> on the other.
> 
> Now in your readings of unvocalised Hebrew, the latter forms naturally
> lack the indication they are lenghtened/geminated. In the MT reading,
> all those forms have CVC syllables. It would be hard to imagine that
> those consonants originally hadn't been lenghtened, because the
> gemination precedes, and in fact probably causes, the tri-consonantal
> layout of the bi-consonantal root.
> There are many of those roots. In cognate languages these roots behave
> very similarly, for example Arabic has both the words sabab سبب as
> sabb سبّ . All this I simply found in the BH dictionary.
> Another example: $DD שדד which both occurs in the shapes shadduni
> שדוני, or y'shaddem ישדם ; and on the other hand 
> y'shad'dem ישדדם,
> shad'du שדדו, shoded שודד and a lot of others.
> 
> A second objection to your idea is the verbal system. It is hard to
> imagine why Hebrew would have the pi'el and pu'al - which Hebrew has
> in common with a.o. Aramaic (pa'el) and Arabic (stem II) - if it would
> lack original CVC syllables. Simply because the only essential feature
> of pi'el is the gemination. The same is true for the "definite
> article", a form that essentially is nothing more than a lengthened
> consonant in the noun.
> 
> I do like your brave non-conformism to the communis opinio. You know I
> am a dissident myself in some points ;) But in this case I feel your
> theory of preference is extremely improbable.
> 
> Best regards,
> Herman

-- 
___________________________________________________
Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/