Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 12:33:57PM -0700, Dave Washburn wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 12:31 PM, Petr Tomasek <tomasek AT etf.cuni.cz> wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> >
> > Whoops! You are corect about the hitpa`el. I got it and the question mark
> switched.
> 
> In BH at least, the nip'al functions both passively and reflexively. The
> chart doesn't really go into what they were originally.

I would nevertheless say that nifʿal is primarily a reflexive stem
which may be used to compensate the lack of a genuine passive stem
in BH...


Petr Tomasek