Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Phil King" <phil_king AT sil.org>]

I’m working from Papua New Guinea with very limited access to dictionaries or 
grammars, so I’m hoping someone can help me with a grammatical question. I 
apologise in advance if it is an obvious question treated in the literature.

I am trying to get an accurate picture of the meanings of verb forms derived 
from the root ts-r-r, with particular attention to the syntactic frames they 
occur in. Both BDB and TDOT list this root as appearing in transitive and 
intransitive frames. I’m particularly trying to get to grips with the 
syntactic frames like ‘tsar liy’ in which the person experiencing distress 
appears as an argument prefixed with the preposition l.  My understanding is 
that here tsar is an intransitive verb with an impersonal third person 
masculine subject governing verb agreement, and the experiencer of the 
‘emotion’ given in a prepositional phrase. As such it is similar to ch-r-h in 
frames like wayichar lo. Is this a normal way of describing the syntax here, 
or is there a better way? A friend has described this to me as ‘reduced 
transitivity’, but I don’t know if that is accepted terminology for Hebrew 
verbs, or if there is other terminology commonly used. 

Given this, my question then, is whether there is an accepted explanation as 
to why sometimes the verb in this frame is third person feminine rather than 
third person masculine, as in Judges 10.9 or 1 Sam 30.6? Is the verb agreeing 
with something different? Are there parallels you are aware of for other 
verbs (in Biblical Hebrew or elsewhere)?

I’d also be interested in any references you can direct me to dealing with 
this kind of construction where the subject of an emotion or sensation 
appears in a prepositional phrase with l, or any detailed treatments of 
ts-r-r.

Many thanks,
Phil King
Eastern Highlands, PNG