Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

James,

The main issue I have with your discussion here is that it seems to be 
approaching a Semitic language from a largely Indo-European perspective. I 
think the discussion needs to pay far more attention to the actual 
construction and internal logic of Semitic languages, especially the concept 
of triliteral roots (that's not to discount biliteral and quadriliteral). I 
don't think it's a question of active or passive use of vowels, but rather of 
the function of consonants and vowels. Syllables are, I believe, a completely 
secondary issue in word formation and alphabetic notation within Hebrew, 
whereas in Indo-European languages it's far more important because they do 
not have Hebrew's basic triliteral construction model.


GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au