Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

So what do you think Karl? Do you think the verses you quoted with the  
sense of pouring have some common meaning with what you have proposed?  
Or do you think they can be reduced to a homograph with variant  
pronunciation when vowels are added?

It's a little frustrating and disappointing that the claimant that  
these are homonyms hasn't come back with the relevant cognate  
evidence. That could have been interesting to look at.

James Christian


Quoting K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>:

> Dave:
>
> On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 9:47 AM, <dwashbur AT nyx.net> wrote:
>
> > This link is so far beyond reaching, I'm not sure English has a word for
> > it.
> >
> > Homonyms happen in most every language of which I am aware, including
> > Hebrew.  There
> > is no need for this kind of linguistic back-flip to try and explain them
> > away.  The simplest
> > answer is usually the most likely to be correct.
> >
> >
> > Dave Washburn
>
>
> All languages have homonyms.
>
> What confuses the issue in Hebrew is because it does not show vowels, there
> are many homographs that are not true homonyms. An example would be )X,
> which has four meanings, probably each pronounced a different way. We don’t
> know for certain, but the probability that all four words had the same
> pronunciation is about nil.
>
> Then there are some false homonyms, proposed roots that not necessarily
> existed. (Not all Hebrew words necessarily had a Hebrew root, how many were
> at one time or another loan words from other languages? This would most
> likely be true of many nouns, referring to imported items.)
>
> Finally, there are some homonyms recognized in Hebrew based on lexicographic
> methodology. Because I look at function and action, I see far fewer homonyms
> than the lexicographers who analyze according to form, e.g. according to
> semantic domains.
>
> In closing, because of a quirk in the Biblical Hebrew writing system, namely
> consonants only with no vowels, homographs are neither automatically from
> the same root, nor are they automatically homonyms if not from the same
> root. There is a third option, namely that they can be different words with
> different pronunciations but the lack of vowels causes them to be written
> the same way. And because vowels were not preserved, we don’t know how many
> homographs were also homonyms.
>
> The example I used to open this thread shows the steps I used before I would
> accept that a homograph could possibly be from the same root.
>
> Karl W. Randolph.
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