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  • From: dwashbur AT nyx.net
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Morphology, words and the waw
  • Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:44:26 -0800



On 5 Feb 2010 at 21:17, James Christian wrote:

> This becomes
> interesting when we discuss words like bookshelf, cat food and so
> on. Are
> they one word? Or two?

Only common usage can determine that, coupled with context. There's no solid
answer.

What about words including clitics? e.g.
> it's, I'm,
> he's got. Are they one word or two?

Those are not clitics. They're contractions, and English usage still
understands them as
basically elisions of two words into one phonetic string.

> This is obviously of some relevance to forms like wayyiqtols. At
> some point
> in time ancient Semitic writing stopped being continuous sequences
> and
> spaces began to be used at the confines of words. Or at least of
> what were
> perceived to be words. And so the question arises. What did they
> perceive as
> 'words'? Why did they write wayiqtol and not wa yiqtol? What factors
> led
> their decision making process? The fact that wa, in general, doesn't
> appear
> as a separate word would seem to indicate that, in general, it was
> not
> perceived as a different word by whatever concensus led to the
> division of
> words. Probably best to thing of wa as a morph. Does that morph
> change the
> meaning of sequences of morphs that follow? i.e. Does the yomer of
> yomer
> have a different meaning from the yomer of wayomer?

The question is far too dependent on languages like English that do things
very differently
than semitic languages did/do. I have argued in print that the wa+doubling
of the wayyiqtol
is a specified grammatical formative, roughly equivalent to a "morph" in your
terminology,
and as such it's not really possible to speak of the "meaning" of the yomer
part of wayyomer
because the wa+doubling is part of the word, and yomer by itself is a
different form. We
know from usage that there's a big difference between yiqtol, "yomer" and
wayyiqtol,
"wayyomer." Hence it's not possible to answer most of your questions.

Dave Washburn

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




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