Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

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