Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

Hi,

Quoting Ishinan <ishinan AT comcast.net>:

> Ishinan:
>
> Ibn Asher,  Mūsā ibn Maymūn and all the other Hebrew scholars mentioned in
> the previous response are in complete agreement of the existence of "tagnis"
> or homonyms in Hebrew.  Having recognized the homonymic conflict in Hebrew
> might have caused frequent misunderstandings of the scriptures, these
> scholars authored numerous treatises on this very topic.  As G. R. Driver
> put it, "this misunderstanding was mainly attributed to the deficiencies of
> the Hebrew alphabet."
>
> The crux of the matter is, so far, all the examples offered by Karl are
> simply homonyms. A simple comparative exercise of these terms with their
> cognates in sister Semitic languages with a more developed alphabet can put
> this matter to rest.

Would you care to expand on this? Could be interesting...

James Christian



> Hope that this helps.
>
> Best regards
>
> Ishinan B. Ishibashi
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Vadim Cherny : "
>
>  I agree, it is hard to argue with ben Moses ben Asher and Rambam ) However,
> the fact is that they understood homonyms differently from modern
> grammarians. Thus, for example, Rambam in Moreh Nevuhim treats "elohim" as a
> homonym denoting God, angels, rulers, or judges. We would, of course, find
> those meanings closely related. It seems that for Rambam any two meanings
> were homonyms, even if semantically related. In a sense, he spoke of
> theological rather than semantic homonyms. Still in other words, while we
> call *totally unrelated* meanings homonyms, Maimonides calls them homonyms
> if they are not *strictly equal* in theological terms. To that end, he
> introduced a concept of perfect and imperfect homonyms."
>
>
> Previously Vadim Cherny also wrote:
>
> "The thing is, Hebrew lacks homonyms. What you see as homonyms are actually
> related meanings. As Karl saw for himself, finding the common meaning
> requires some study but it is always there. This is a function of root
> cells. I take Steinberg's  dictionary  for a fine example of such search. "
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
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