Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

I'll ignore the condescension evident in the subject change and just make a 
few comments.

On 6 Sep 2009 at 17:07, Randall Buth wrote:

> >Different stems of a verbal root do not constitute a "different
> verb."  If you claim they do, I
> hope you have some solid, tenable evidence. >
> 
> I would claim that there are five basic vocabulary-building stems
> that
> Hebrew uses
> for building verbs out of a root.

Building "verbs," eh?  I would say they're used for building "forms," whereas 
"verb" 
encompasses all the attested forms built off a root.  Obviously, not all 
forms are attested for 
all verbs/roots.  This smacks of playing word games to try and shore up a 
theory that is 
sorely lacking in actual evidence.

> Qal (pa`al/ pa`el/ pa`ol)   -    [[Nif`al]]
> 
>      Nif`al   (itself-- i.e., not as auto-generated passive of
> pa`al)
> 
> PIel     -     [[Pual]]
> 
>        Hitpa`el
> 
> Hif`al     -     Hof`al
> 
> 
> In that sense, Hebrew has five binyanim,
> though these five are based
> on three basic skeletons:
> 'zero' [p`l],
> doubled middle root letter, and
> h-prefix.
> The n+root binyan took over the qal passive, so it now does
> 'double duty',
> and the hitpa`el is a 't' sub-binyan of the 'doubled middle'.

Actually, thanks to Ugaritic we have nine attested binyanim, or did you 
forget the 
'eshtaph`al?  You're welcome to call some of them "sub-binyanim" but from 
what I can see 
it's not a particularly useful term.

> (Yes, there are many other sub-binyanim for phonetic and
> historical
> reasons like polel [a pi`el type], hishtaf`al, etc.) we are talking
> here
> about the generic system of the Hebrew language.

Those are essentially phonetic oddities that I would not consider actual 
binyanim or even 
sub-binyanim (whatever this term may actually mean).

> Pu`al and Hof`al are not called 'binyanim' in this sense because
> they do not build independent vocabulary iterms.

This is nonsense.They have their own declension patterns, distinctive forms, 
forms and 
forces.  
 
> These vocabulary items constitute useable, communicable verbs.
> 
> If someone creates/created a new verb by building in a new stem of
> a
> root, then that is a neologism.
> When accepted and used by a language community, it becomes a
> normal 'verb'.

This looks like little more than an arbitrary redefinition of the word 
"verb," and I have serious 
doubts as to its validity.

> The above consistutes a standard, linguistic, cross-Semitic
> derevational
> morphology.

"Standard" according to whom?  I've seen this approach used for modern 
Hebrew, but it 
really doesn't seem to work there, either.  You're welcome to play with it, 
but I hardly think 
it's anything like universally accepted.

> It is not usually taught in beginning Hebrew pedagogy but it is
> the
> principle underlying the verb systems of the different Semitic
> languages
> and is regularly learned by beginning students as part of Arabic
> derivational morphology. It is typically addressed in
> advanced Hebrew classes. Or you could look at
> Living Biblical Hebrew, Part Two, in the back chapter on the
> binyanim
> for an example with beginning students.
> 
> Because of typical Hebrew pedagogy, roots are often learned as
> 'verbs'
> by beginning students, and then in the fine print somewhere the
> students are warned that they cannot just 'conjugate these roots
> into
> binyanim'. To do so would be to propose neologisms in many cases
> or to propose new meanings for old verbs.

Again, we're just playing with terms here, and not really accomplishing 
anything significant.
 
> In order to help students avoid the 'etymological fallacy' that is
> often
> endemic to traditional Hebrew pedagogy, I carefully refer to a
> root
> as a root.
> When I talk about a verb, I am talking about verbs (not abstract
> roots)
> like sippar and minna, and would distinguish these from other
> verbs
> like safar and mana, even though sippar and safar share the same
> root s-p-r and minna and mana share the same root m-n-y. And
> although mana and safar have a highly congruent semantic meaning,
> (counting/numbering)
> the verbs sippar and minna do not share a highly congruent
> semantic meaning with each other.

Wow.  There's not much to be said about this that I haven't already stated 
above.  And 
clearly, the only way you can hold this odd approach is by writing off the 
passive binyanim 
as explicitly stated above.  But merely saying something doesn't make it so, 
and the 
evidence we have from BH suggests that it most assuredly is not so.
 
> Thus yashlix (yashlik) 'he would throw' is a verb, while *yishlox is
> not a
> biblical verb. higgid 'he reported/told' is a biblical verb, *nagad
> is not
> a biblical verb.

I find it hard to believe this is for real.  What you mean is, they are not 
biblically attested 
forms.  Did they exist in the BH world?  We have no idea.  But to call each a 
separate "verb" 
only serves to make the overall picture more vague.  If this is your approach 
to teaching BH, 
I'm glad I learned it elsewhere.
 
> In simple words-- the meanings of roots in various binyanim are
> not
> predictable in the way that suffixtense--prefix tense are
> predictible or
> that pi`el--pu``al are predictable.
> To what may this be compared?
> To the unpredictability of derivational morphology in any
> language,
> like English *duce (a great verb for teaching students, right?)
> and re-duce and pro-duce, or do and re-do. Etc.

Semantics is an entirely different animal.  Word meanings change over time, 
obviously.  A 
good example is the word "prevent" in the New Testament book of 1 
Thessalonians in the 
KJV.  In 1611 it meant "go before," but now that task is taken up by 
"precede."  "Prevent" 
means something different.  Does that mean it's a different "verb?"  Hardly.  
Its semantic 
meaning has changed, that's all.  It's clear that some verb forms underwent 
similar changes 
in the development of BH, but that doesn't make them different "verbs."  
 
> In the rare event that the above does not already make sense,

The statements make sense.  The theory doesn't.

I doubt I will pursue my part in this discussion any further, since it's 
clear we have no 
common ground on which to build.  I find your approach and definitions 
arbitrary, 
unfounded, excessively and unnecessarily complex, and ultimately unlikely.

Dave Washburn

http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur