Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 1/3/07, Peter Kirk wrote:

> What root XWH? BDB lists three such roots: XWH as a Phoenician variant
> of XYH; XWH for "tent-village"; and XWH meaning "tell, declare". None
> have a derived noun XY. I think you are thinking of the root XYH "live".
> While "hollow" verbs with W and Y are sometimes interchangeable, I don't
> think they are here.

From my point of view, the question is roots of the form -WH.  The
Phoenician variant gives reason to suspect that the original root was
XWH and the Hebrew reflex was XYH.  This is why I gave it as an
example.

> CW is found not only in Isaiah 28:10,13, but also in Hosea 5:11,
> although ancient translations suggest an original reading $W)

I hadn't meant to limit it out by saying "Biblical Hebrew."  I used Hosea
5:11 in my suggestion of a meaning earlier in this thread.  Karl's
discussion of that verse reflects much the same as his discussion of
Isaiah 28:10,13 and it is bound to the same criticisms.

> As for similarly derived words, there is of course QW which is not just
> a nonsense word but a common word "measuring line" and, at least
> according to BDB, derived from the root QWH. Then there is GW "back",
> probably from GWH, and TW "mark", probably from TWH, also WW "hook".

The words QW and GW are noted by Joshua Fox as isolated nouns deriving
from *qaww and *gabb/*ganb/(*gaww?).  The classification as isolated nouns
means that there is no reason to suspect that these roots are derived from
a verb, and that any verbs that may be found are probably derivatives of the
nouns and not the other way around.  This situation means that we should
expect many uses of the nouns but fewer uses of the verbs.  This is not the
situation with the verb CWH, but rather much the opposite.  As for TW, the
word is spelled with a qamats -- tɔv.  This could be a case where the word is
derived from a two letter root *taw, compare *yad > yɔd except in construct.
In such a case, the verb is too derived from the word.  The number of
occurrences of either the verb or the noun are too few to compare but it is
significant that we find the verb used in conjunction with the noun in
one of the
two occurrences of this verb, whereas in the case cwh we never find cwh with
the noun cw.  I like this explanation better because it derives taw
similar to the
word yad, both of them also names of letters.  If we take this as a
derivation of
the noun from a verb, then this probably indicates that in a proper
derivation of
a noun from a verb the medial waw would have been placed between two "a"
vowels -- *tawaw -- and then, in a process comparable to verb conjugations
such as qɔm, this "awa" would have caused *tawaw > *ta:w > tɔv.  This is not
the case in cav because of the patah.  The  word vɔv also has a qamats, has
no verb, and is not recognized by Fox as an isolated noun so in this case I
guess this is a word peculiar to Hebrew and  Aramaic, and perhaps a loan
word from a foreign language.

I am looking for examples of other nouns of the same form as cav derived from
verbal roots as Karl suggests is the case with cav.  While Karl may not be
attentive to the differences of patah and qamats, I am looking for two
conditions.

1) The number of times the verb occurs should indicate that the verb is quite
frequent.  This is because if the noun was derived from the verb, it
is unlikely
that the noun would remain in linguistic usage and the verb would die out and
only a few instances remain, but in contrast, it is quite likely that
the verb was
originally somewhat common to have caused a noun to be derived of it.

2) There should be some clear example of the verb used in conjunction with
the noun, like we have in taw.  This does not have to involve nouns ending
with waw, but rather show a pattern where, for example, verbs with medial
W have a two letter derived nouns from the first and last letters of the 
verbal
root.  Perhaps there are other possible examples of how the noun could
theoretically be derived from the verb.  He claimed there was a legitimate
pattern of noun derivation here.  I am curious as to the evidence of that 
claim.

Yitzhak Sapir