Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Hi Pere,

Personally, I think you are wrong and I have indeed raised a linguistic
argument against his assertion. Practitioners of more "formal"
linguistic persuasion would even have more to say than what I've outlined.

Gender-marking indexes an *attribute* of the referent, not the referent
itself, whether that be the head noun in the case of an adjective, or
the referent of the noun in the case of the noun (I'm leaving aside the
issue of non-semantic gender-marking here as it's a side issue). That
is, it does not refer to the "bearer" or "thing" itself unlike
person-marking. I repeat: gender-marking is not person-marking!

Regards,

David Kummerow.



> > The problem with the statement is that it assumes that the 
> > gender-marking of the adjective and noun is in fact person-marking 
> > (speech-participant marking), here third-person. That's why he says 
> > "-AH refers to the *feminine bearer* of the attribute" and "-AH refers 
> > to *the thing itself*."
>
> __________
>
> David,
>
> I think Isaac is right when he says
> "-AH
> > refers to the *feminine bearer* of the attribute" and "-AH refers to 
> > *the thing itself*."
>
> In Ec 9:16 we find "tovAH", (female) good (adjective, feminine form), 
> and in Nm 24:13 we find "tovAH", welfare, goodness (substantive feminine)
>
> I think nothing can be raised against his assertion.
>
> Pere Porta
> Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain)
>
>
>
>
> > Even more bizarre and illogical is his example of what has 
> > traditionally been seen to be gender-marking is in fact second-person 
> > marking:
> >
> > "The counterpart to MAR, 'mister' is MAR-AT, where -AT is surely the 
> > personal pronoun AT, 'you'."
> >
> > These assertions rest on no linguistic foundation whatsoever and are 
> > able to be uttered only because of naiveness in relation to the 
> > fundamentals and basics of general linguistics. No linguist would give 
> > assent to them.
> >
> > Rather, gender-marking on nouns and adjectives is an indexical or 
> > agreement coding strategy which indexes a semantic dependency of that 
> > indicated by the morpheme in question. In this sense, then, I take it 
> > that gender-marking "refers", but this issue is actually theoretically 
> > divisive, so not everyone will agree with this statement. But 
> > gender-marking on nouns and adjectives is not to be equated and 
> > collapsed with person-marking!
> >
> > Regards,
> > David Kummerow.
> >
> >
> > > David,
> > >
> > > I'm not Isaac's advocate, but I ask you: what  do you find to be 
> > > wrong or mistaken in this statement of his?:
> > >
> > > "4. In the adjective TOBAH, 'good', -AH refers to the feminine bearer of
> > > the attribute, but in the noun TOBAH, 'favor, goodness', -AH refers to
> > > the thing itself."
> > >
> > > Best regards from
> > >
> > > Pere Porta
> > > Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain)