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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] The Sade/Ayin-Quf literary device

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The Sade/Ayin-Quf literary device
  • Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2007 01:42:04 +0000

On 04/01/2007 00:41, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

... 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 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.

Thank you for your reply. But in fact there is good reason to assume that these two words are common at least to NW Semitic - because they are letter names! The use of a the letter vav looking like a hook and the letter tav looking like a mark or cross goes back to the proto-Canaanite script (indeed the latter is found as early as Wadi el-Hol, around 1800 BCE), and was also borrowed into Greek - along with the letter name tau, also originally wau which became known later as digamma. This implies that these two words were used by Semites rather early, probably around 2000 BCE when the alphabet was invented on the acrophonic principle.

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. ...

I don't think you will find any others, at least in biblical Hebrew. I looked at all 22 possible two consonant words ending in consonantal vav, and listed them almost all.

...
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. ...

But this is not the hypothesis! The hypothesis a noun of the form XY (X and Y here being unknowns) derived from a "lamed-he" type verb XYH. And we have an example simply by reading XY and XYH as transliterations, and by understanding the Hebrew verb for "live" to be the attested form XYH rather than the conjectural XWH. That is certainly a well attested pairing with a clear semantic link.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/





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