Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Petr Tomasek <tomasek AT etf.cuni.cz>]

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 06:13:57PM -0700, Dave Washburn wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 3:26 PM, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Ken:
> >
> > On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 12:06 PM, Ken Penner <kpenner AT stfx.ca> wrote:
> >
> >> Do the following help?
> >>
> >> Joüon §59g: "In the light of Ugr. tštḥwy “she prostrates herself,” what
> >> used to be considered hitpa̧ʿlẹl, represented almost entirely by the
> >> frequent הִשְׁתַּחֲוָה to worship, to prostrate oneself, is most likely a
> >> Hištafʿel of √ חוי."
> >>
> >
> > From where does he get this?
> >
> >>
> >>
> What you're seeing, both there and in the Jouon quote, is a grammarian
> trying desperately to figure out what's going on with this unique word. It
> used to be taught that it was a hitpa`el of $XH with metathesis of the shin
> and the tau, and no clue why the waw. But as Ken already mentioned,
> Ugaritic has shown us that the root is actually XWH and the stem is a
> hi$tap`el. Once upon a time we had a grid of stems with a hole in the
> middle:
> 
>                      Basic             Emphatic              Causative
> 
> Active             qal                  pi`el                    hip`il
> 
> Passive          nip`al               pu`al                   hop`al
> 
> Reflexive         nip`al                 ?                      hitpa`el

This is wrong: a) nipʿal is not a passive stem originally,
b) hitpaʿel is not (and never was) a causative stem.

> Thanks to Ugaritic, we now know what goes where the question mark is. And
> yes, it only survives in this one word in that language, too. That's an
> accident of preservation, but I don't really think anybody can deny that
> the word exists.


Petr Tomasek