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  • From: Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>
  • To: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Question
  • Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 08:53:51 -0500

David,

You have it all wrong. The "gender-marking" is a figment of your (or your mentors') imagination. You can safely shed it from your vocabulary.
It is crystal clear to me now that not only did you not put so much as a dent in "my theories", but that you have shown yourself also still quite confused as to what the Hebrew language is all about.
I suggest that you read my book and pay close attention to my postings on this list.
I am sorry that my responses to you are often curt, but I sometimes find the improvised logic of you postings so frustrating as to render them unanswerable.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Dec 11, 2007, at 6:20 PM, David Kummerow wrote:

Hi Pere,

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*."

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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