Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>]

Yonah,

I am sorry to put it bluntly, but it seems to me that only a blind  
man would not agree that:

$AMARTA = $AMAR-ATAH    ($ = SHIN)
$AMART = $AMAR-AT
$AMARNU = $AMAR-ANU
$MARTEM = $AMAR-ATEM
$MARTEN = $AMAR-ATEN

$MARTANI = $AMAR-ATA-ANI
$MARTANU = $AMAR-ATAH-ANU
$MARNUHU = $AMAR-ANU-HU
$MARNUKEM = $AMAR-ANU-AKEM

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Apr 18, 2007, at 11:11 PM, Yonah Mishael wrote:

> Peter,
>
> I fail to see how the terminations -/é/ or -/í/ of the preterite and
> -/o/ of the present tense in Spanish can both refer to the same
> first-person /yo/. I don't see how the -/aste/ or -/iste/ termination
> of the second-person preteriste can be traced to the pronounce -/tú/.
> Does one have to go into the proto-languages to view this stage in
> development? If so, then it is still mostly conjectural, since there
> is no example of any Proto-Indo-European language at play anywhere in
> real world. It is a reconstruction (as even you state) rather than a
> practical demonstration.
>
> I agree that terminations are connected to pronouns, of course. But, I
> just have a hard time seeing as direct a connection as Isaac is
> suggesting, to the point that the actual pronoun was originally fused
> to the final part of the word in some form. Perhaps with more
> investigation and openmindedness I will come to agree with Isaac, but
> where I am right now, I just cannot imagine it being so simply at the
> base.
>
> Yours,
> Yonah Mishael
> Joplin, MO
>
> On 4/18/07, Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org> wrote:
> > Yonah, you can't see this clearly in Latin because the fusion  
> > actually
> > took place much earlier. If you look back at reconstructed
> > Proto-Indo-European, see the examples I gave earlier, the
> > correspondences are much more clear. Despite what Uri wrote, that  
> > "this
> > is the realm of sheer speculation", this is in fact as clearly
> > demonstrated as anything can be from the remote past. This is how
> > language works, even if you have to look a bit beyond Latin 101 to  
> > see it.
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew