Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>]

isaac,

i agree that the feminine article "at" was involved, but i think only in a 
partial way.  as to the first case, melek-malkah, i suggest a two-stage 
process.

   stage 1: the feminine article "at" (you) as a suffix was an ancient way of 
forming the feminine form of an 
   object: melek--> malkat. i believe this was the rule in accadian (tihamat, 
ashtoret etc).  as feminine objects 
   were originally considered,  as a rule,  somebody's possession, this 
became the "smichut form" in hebrew.

   stage 2: the non-smichut form ending -ah was (perhaps later on) reserved 
for feminine objects in their own right , but 
   this later process "-at--> -ah" was no more related to the word "at".

as to xata-->xatat, this is a different story, since xatat (although 
feminine) is not just "feminine xet". actually it is a case of the 
ending  "ut" which implies an abstract noun, just like shalem-->shlemut, 
sefer--> sifrut, as a rule only in the singular. here, the explanation
"sifrut<--sefer+at" makes no sense. instead, i suggest 
"sifrut<--sefer+heiot". once "-ut" was established as a general suffix, and 
assuming 
a vowel ending "a" for the irregular root "xet" (which ends with aleph), the 
diphthong "au" simplified to "a".
i think that a similar construction with the auxiliary verb "to be"  can be 
attested in many languages.

nir cohen

On Thu, 6 Jan 2011 20:20:54 -0500, Isaac Fried wrote
> Seems to me: XATAT (חטאת) = XAT-AT (חטא-את).
> Similarly: MALKAT (מלכת) = MALK-AT (מלך-את), *KANARIYT (כנרית) = 
> KANAR-HIY)-AT (כנר-היא-את), etc. 
> 
> Isaac Fried, Boston University
> 
> On Jan 6, 2011, at 11:06 AM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. wrote:
> though isaak might claim otherwise. here one should also consider 
> xet-xata)t (vaikra 16:3): xet is the original word and xata)t (sacrifice) 
> is the derived one

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