Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

On 6 Feb 2010 at 1:14, James Christian wrote:

> 
> Hi, 
> 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.
> I don't know if you realise it but you just gave a pretty good
> definition of clitics after claiming they 
> weren't clitics. 

I'm constantly amazed at how you do that.  No, a contraction is not the same 
as a clitic.  
Look them both up if you're confused.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'one phonetic
> string'. Both I'm and I am are 
> continuous sequences in a speech signal. It is only our perception
> (guided by whatever 
> psycholinguistic principles) that has the word divisions. 

I don't know where you got that, but it's wrong.

>     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. 
> 
> Seems to me like you've answered it quite well. You've stated a
> concrete position that the 
> difference in meaning between yomer and wayyomer is more than just a
> simple conjunction. 
> Could you back it up with examples to show your case? 

Truthfully, considering the way I've seen you ignore evidence and attempt to 
manipulate 
other evidence so as not to bring down your little house of cards, I'm not 
sure why I should 
bother.  Hence, I won't.  If you're interested in my theory, see my paper in 
the 1994 issue of 
Hebrew Studies.

Dave Washburn

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