Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Mohler <jonathan.mohler AT gmail.com>]

Yes I am postulating that (A)KEM is related to (A)KAH.  That is, if you pluralize -KAH to -KAYIM, it would naturally develop into -KEM.  I don't have a theory for how the self-standing ATAH would engender the suffix -KAH.  As for ATEM it seems more likely to me that it developed from ATAYIM, a possible edenic origin for TWO words like TWAIN and TWIN.  

Jonathan Mohler

  

On Jul 24, 2013, at 10:02 AM, Isaac Fried wrote:

This is not entirely clear to me. Do you mean שלך $ELKA, 'yours', which in my opinion is the compound של-אכה $EL-AKAH, where AKAH is a variant of אתה ATAH; and שלכם $ELAKEM, 'yours', which in my opinion is the compound של-אכם $EL-AKEM, where AKEM is a variant of אתם ATEM, that is by itself the compound את-הם AT-HEM?

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Jul 24, 2013, at 12:07 AM, Jonathan Mohler wrote:

Let me digress one last time.  This kind of morphophonemic development in my opinion is strong indication that the 2ms ending -CHA and 2mp ending -CHEM.  Most likely something like -CHA --> *-CHAYIM --> -CHEM