Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:02 AM, K Randolph wrote:

> Right now I’m willing to live with a certain amount of fuzziness in
> understanding, but if you insist that I choose one side or the other,
> I would say that in Biblical Hebrew a participle = noun, hence not to
> be treated as a verb.

I am not insisting that you choose one side or the other.  I said that
you should treat them consistently -- not choosing one side or the
other in different cases based on your perception of grammar.  My
preference is to view them all as "fuzzy" between both a noun and
a verb.  Rolf was very explicit in his claims and stated that both
infinitives and participles -- without exception -- are not cancellable,
so you'd seem to be at odds with his view.  Again, cancellable here
(based on Olsen) means that context cannot cause a verb to lose
its inherent meaning (such as dynamicity).  I get the feeling you've
got a different view of cancellability.

Yitzhak Sapir