Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Paul:

On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 5:21 AM, Paul Zellmer <pzellmer AT sc.rr.com> wrote:

> Why tri-phonemic?  Because the written text is a descriptive representation
> of the vocalization of the oral text, and analysis has indicated that the
> language used trilateral roots.
>

How much of that tri-literal root system is an invention of tradition?

What I noticed as I analyzed words is that for some words, a tri-literal
root is not attested in Tanakh, or found only in a conjugation where one
would expect to find an added letter, such as a hiphil. Then there are a few
words where analysis indicates that they originally had quadrilitieral
roots. But by far from all historical evidence, the majority of Biblical
Hebrew words can be traced to triliteral roots.

>
> For Isaac’s proposal,


His proposal is not Hebrew nor attested to in any evidence from historical
sources. Further, it is contradicted by the evidence that has been found. I
have stopped responding to his posts, in fact usually do not read them, as a
waste in time. His proposal is idiosyncratic and based on a linguistic
fallacy called the etymological fallacy.


>
> As for your reconstitution statement, the core words were not changed.
>  Grammar was, adopting more of an Indo-European flavor, but the base
> vocabulary remained.  Did pronunciation differ from the original?  Perhaps,
> but that would be in the vowels and perhaps idiomatic pronunciation of
> certain consonants.  Nothing occurred that would have changed the number of
> letter/consonantal phonemes in the roots.
>

The above paragraph deals with modern Hebrew, which is outside
the purview of this group.

>
> Paul Zellmer
>
>
> Karl W. Randolph.