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  • From: Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>
  • To: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] About Dagesh's
  • Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:10:44 -0400

David,

1. It is not mockery but a modest reminder that before we set out to build theoretical castles in the air we need to pause and reconsider how flimsy, dubious, uncertain and controversial the raw data possibly is.
2. The articles you cite are not easy to get. Posting them would be helpful.
3. If someone prefers to see $IBER of Exodus 9:25 as 'broke to pieces' or 'broke over and over'; or GIDE(A of Psalms 107:15 as 'hacked to smidgens' it is his choice. Some Hebrew grammar books say so too [Gesenius, on page 141 of his grammar book, asserts that "The fundamental idea of the piel, to which all the various shades of meaning in this conjugation may be referred is to busy oneself eagerly with the action indicated by the stem"] but the value of their supporting evidence is practically zero. I myself don't find any justification for this extra reading into the text.
4. Similarly, you may look at the $IXET [with a taw] form of Genesis 38:9 as a hint to recidivism, or you may consider it a guard against the reading $AXAT with a tet.
5. Evidently, piel is principally causative as in GIDAL, XIZAL, and so on. It is also used to create words with an extended, or implied, meaning distinct from the one in the paal form, for instance, BACAR, 'reaped', and BICER, 'fortified'; or from a name, for instance ZANAB and ZINEB. This device is put to good use now in spoken Hebrew with the purpose of enlarging the vocabulary, for instance, $ATAQ, 'was silent', $ITEQ, 'paralyzed'; QAMAC, 'grasped', QIMEC, 'economized'.
6. It is conceivable that some of these piel forms were not "originally" there but were introduced by the nakdanim or their forerunners to embellish the reading.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Jun 20, 2008, at 8:40 PM, David Kummerow wrote:


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

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