Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Hi John,

Well, you pick an example where the "base" parts are the same. Dividing 
between a "base" morpheme and a "prefix" morpheme to answer you question 
is entirely arbitrary, linguistically speaking. In any case, [ha$omer] 
differs from [ha$$omer] with respect to the dagesh. The prefixed 
morphemes are /ha/ and /haC/ (more correctly /haμ/, where μ stands for 
mora). Again I assert that in this morpheme, removal of the dagesh 
changes the morpheme, and hence its semantics, entirely. The principle, 
therefore, that in BH the dagesh is phonemic -- and hence meaningful -- 
is established. Whether a linguistic side effect of this is that some 
verbal or nominal morphology solely differs with respect to this 
morpheme is entirely secondary -- meaning that the answer to your 
question regarding "bases", whether affirmative or negative, does not 
really matter with respect to the phonemic status of dagesh. By removing 
dagesh from /haC/, you remove the distinguishing phoneme from the 
morpheme, hence there is significant meaning loss in doing so.

Regards,
David Kummerow.


> So with the example:
> <H:A/$OM"R> vs <HA/$.OM"R>
>
> The "base" parts are :
> <$OM"R> vs <$.OM"R>
> They both have the exact same letters.
> They both have the exact same vowels.
> One has a dagesh - one doesn't.
> But they have the same meaning: Qal Participle Masculine Singular
>
> Is there ever a case that a word will have all of the above criteria,
> except that the words have different meaning?