Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

And I presume that we take your own view, Isaac, with a bag of salt, 
given your characteristic mocking of a position in the place of any 
substantial critique.

Regarding your previous post concerning the intensive function of the 
Piel, it has been shown that one of the functions of the Piel is indeed 
that of verbal plurality (what was known by the pre-theoretical 
terminology of "intensive"). See the following:

Fehri, Abdelkader Fassi. 2003. “Verbal Plurality, Transitivity, and 
Causativity.” Pages 151-185 in Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II: 
Selected Papers from the Fifth Conference on Afroasiatic Languages, 
Paris, 2000. Edited by Jacqueline Lecarme. Amsterdam Studies in the 
Theory and History of Linguistic Science 241. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: 
John Benjamins.

Greenberg, Joseph H. 1991. “The Semitic ‘Intensive’ as Verbal 
Plurality.” Pages 577-587 in Semitic Studies in Honor of Wolf Leslau: On 
the Occasion of His Eighty-Fifth Birthday, November 14th, 1991. 2 vols. 
Edited by Alan S. Kaye. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

Of course, this is not the only function of the Piel as there is also 
the resulatative function of (generally) stative verbs; see:

Jenni, Ernst. 1968. Das hebräische Pi‘el: Syntakisch–semasiologische 
Untersuchung einer Verbalform im Alten Testament. Zürich: EVZ-Verlag.

Regards,
David Kummerow.


> Yitzhak,
>
> 1. Anything said about the vocalization of ancient languages should
> be taken with three grains of salt.
> 2. Foreign rendering of Hebrew names should be taken with two grains
> of salt as we don't know what they heard, where, and from whom.
> 3. Unusual grammatical forms on isolated inscriptions should be taken
> with a grain of salt as the scratcher may have been only semi educated.
>
> Isaac Fried, Boston University