Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

  Hi Nir and Yigal,

  What about regular declensions of 'ax' and 'ab'
  - 'axykha' 'axyv' etc, or 'avykha' 'avyw'  etc.
 Note the letter "Yud" is preserved throughout the
 declension, and is also retained in the consruct,
 e.g. 'axy-hamelekh' or 'avy-hayeled'.

  Clearly this points an early PS vowel following
 the two consonants of these nouns. Cf. with 'abw'
 (abu) in Arabic.

  However, this ancient vowel was not preserved in
 all names of this type, e.g. 'Axav', 'avram'. 

  For a different comparison look at the Heb. noun
 ')em' (mother) in declension - no 'yud' there.

    Uri Hurwitz



Yigal Levin

On Behalf Of Nir cohen - 

Subject: [b-hebrew] xiram

...the middle Y in many semitic names, when used to fuse together two separate
words, such as AX-Y-RM etc, should be interpreted firstly as a phonetic
process, and only secondly as a grammatical process...