Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

On 6 Sep 2009 at 20:54, James wrote:

> Le 2009-09-06 à 20:43, dwashbur AT nyx.net a écrit :
>
> >> 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.
>
> If I may interject into this escalating debate, now I´m curious: Is
> there a general consensus (from which of course some are of
> different
> views) that verbs *do* refer to either the fuzzy meaning of the root
> or the perhaps overly precise meaning of the root as found in a
> particular binyan?

I'll go ahead and respond since I'm here :-)  The short answer from my 
perspective is, no.  A
binyan of a particular verb *may* follow the patterns taught to us according 
to what my first
Hebrew prof lovingly called "first-year lies."  But in keeping with commonly 
made
observations regarding semantic shift, some drifted away so that the same 
form may have
varying force, or a particular stem has developed what might be called an 
anomalous
meaning, e.g. DIBBER appears to lack any "intensive" force.  However, in my 
view, this
does not make it a distinct "verb" from other stem-forms that might be 
encountered.  An
English example of this kind of semantic drift can be seen in the word 
"strike."  As a verb it
means "to hit" in bowling, but "to miss" in baseball.  It's clear that 
similar drift has taken
place in BH, and like all semantic drift, it tends to be a bit, shall we say, 
capricious.  That's
why I usually focus my studies on syntax ;-)

Dave Washburn

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