Biblical Hebrew Forum

["stoneyb" <stoneyb AT touchwood.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Isaac Fried [mailto:if AT math.bu.edu] 
> All a pronoun is is a universal identity marker, and is therefore
meaningful in all the cases I brought up. 

I don't know what a "universal identity marker" is, but a pronoun by
definition must act both syntactically and semantically as a substitute
for a contextually identificable noun to which it refers. "-er" does
not. It can transform a verb into a noun representing the verb's agent
(play > player), or a noun representing an activity into another noun
representing one who pursues that activity (football > footballer), or a
noun representing a place into another noun representing an inhabitant
or native of that place (London > Londoner). But it can't refer to a
noun and it can't act as a noun.

Translated into programming jargon: a pronoun is a variable, "-er" is a
function.

> Notice that the equality does not say er=are. 
Well, it appears from your address that you're the mathematician, but
the equation you presented was "prison+er=prison+are" - if I subtract
"prison" from both sides "er=are" is exactly what I get!

Stoney Breyer
Writer/Touchwood, Inc.