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  • From: <pporta AT oham.net>
  • To: "David Kummerow" <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>, <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Replaying
  • Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 10:15:06 +0100

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!

________________

I may agree with you in a general way.

Indeed, while a final -T may refer both to male ("amarta" Jr 45:3) and female ("amart" 2Sa 6:22) second person singular...what about such words as "YFR:)FH", she feared (Jr 3:8), where final -H
is both marker of gender and of person?
Is it something merely
coincidental, a hazardous or chancy case?

Pere Porta





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)








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