Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>]

On Tue, 25 Jun 2013 10:31:25 +0300, Sasson Margaliot <sasson AT live.com> wrote:
> A new system for root-identification was introduced in article "CVC
> Roots in Hebrew":http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001641
>
> The Rule #1 is the Lexical Gemination Rule:
>
> Unmotivated geminination of a consonant in nouns suggests the
> geminated constant is a root-final.

Interesting, but I'm not convinced.

Question: Under "Lexical Gemination", example #6, you state:

   (6) Ge.DuL.Lah ‘greatness’

   We conclude that in (6), [D, L] is the Root.

   The Root is merged first with ‘little a’ (spelled out by ‘G’), and then
   with ‘little n’ (spelled out by ‘u’).

What on earth do you mean by your 'little a' and 'little n'?

The more fundamental question, though, is what explanatory power does
your theory have?  If I understand your rules properly, the root of
DeReKh is RK, but the root of SeFeR is SF, but what semantic reason is
there to think the De- in DeReKh is a prefix or the -eR in SeFeR is a
suffix?  Or why think these two subclasses of segolate nouns should be
analysed differently in this manner?

> Gemination of root-final is a common phonological process, that
> happen in various languages, including English:
>
> brimming, clubbing, cutting, fitting, getting,grabbing,
> hopping,letting, lobbing, logging, rubbing, setting, slamming,
> stabbing, swimming,spitting, splitting, travelling, vetting, ...

The English examples you cite are not examples of gemination, but of
an orthographic convention.  I.e., the doubled letters do not indicate
a change in the articulation (a "doubling") of the consonant, but
secondarily indicate the quality of the preceding vowel.

> For the triplet (K,T,V), there is a word-form "K.TuB.Bot",
>
> According to the rule #1, the existence of a noun where the theird
> radical is geminated suggest that the root in this case if is TV

And the K is a prefix?  Why?

-- 
William Parsons
μὴ φαίνεσθαι, ἀλλ' εἶναι.