Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Bekins <pbekins AT fuse.net>]

> Only if the letter in question is an initial letter that later got  
> lost in
> Akkadian/Assyrian.  The permanent loss of an initial letter  
> logically implies that it was not an integral part of the root, but  
> rather was a mere prefix.

Jim,

The change of the 5 laryngeals to aleph which I alluded to in an  
earlier post - (, ), ḥ, h,and ġ - is a merger which is not  
conditioned by the position of the letter in the word. That is, ALL  
ḥ (note this is Yitzhak's X. not X_ which was preserved) changed to  
aleph. It has nothing to do with being in initial position. Thus  
Hebrew BXR 'to choose' = Akk bêru 'to choose'.

However, even if it was only in initial position such a change would  
no more prove that it was a prefix than American English /hello/  
versus British English /'allo/ proves that h- is a prefix and that  
the original word was 'lo'.

Peter Bekins