Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Donald Vance <donaldrvance AT mac.com>]

Aramaic DID gave internal G passives. What ate you talking about?

Sent from my iPhone

Donald R. Vance
donaldrvance AT mac.com

On Jun 20, 2010, at 1:24 AM, Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>  
wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Randall Buth wrote:
>
> > The MT has retained vocalizations like luqqaH and yuqqaH  
> > לֻקַּח יֻקַּח
> > as well as yuttan יֻתַּן and 'ennenu ukkal' איננו  
> > אֻכָּל. [Note that this
> > last form is a participle, and thus not pu`al, nor feminine like  
> > 'fire'.]
> > This is remarkable because Aramaic had no internal qal passive, nor
> > even a nifal. [Aramaic did have forms built off of the passive- 
> > perfect
> > participle with cEc-I-c vowels.] And the BH vowels don't fit the  
> > Arabic
> > passives, *luqiHa. They do not function as pu``als, and there are no
> > pi``els attested for them to be passives to. From comparison with
> > other Semitic languages it is clear that an internal Qal passive used
> > to exist, but a qal would not have a lengthened middle consonant:
> > either *luqaH or *luqiH. but not *luqqaH.
> > So how can the dagesh in MT luqqaH be explained?
> > Due to the nature of long and short vowels in unaccented syllables,  
> > the
> > passive nature of these BH forms needed to develop a morphological/
> > phonetic change during the biblical/post-biblical period. The  
> > phonetic
> > lengthening of the consonant after the [u] vowel achieved this. But
> > this resulted in a homonym with pu``al forms in the past/suffix tense
> > and with hof`al in the future/prefix tense.
>
> I would like to suggest that perhaps it is not an issue of phonetic  
> change,
> but of morphological leveling.  As internal Qal passives were  
> increasingly
> lost, especially under the influence of Aramaic that did not have  
> them,
> these were viewed not as a separate class by themselves but as an
> exceptional form of the Pual and Hophal for some roots (just like  
> yitpaqad
> might be viewed as an exceptional form of the Hitpael).  Eventually,
> morphological leveling had its way, and the unique forms of the Qal
> passives were lost.
>
> Yitzhak Sapir
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