Karl Randolph wrote:This is an interesting question which goes to the heart of what is meant by form and meaning. Samuel states that this is "a plural *form*", my emphasis. But in this link he says:
The construct LMW occures over 50 times in Tanakh. Though the
majority of its uses are for plural subjects, it refers to what is
unquestionably a singular subject often enough that the numerical
value of the -MW cannot be determined from the form. The only people
I have run into before who insisted that LMW had to be plural did so
for ideological, not linguistic, reasons.
L/F^MOW is a plural form. For a discussion, and some literature, see
http://whi.wts.edu/WHI/MORPH/BugTracker/7
It seems best, therefore, to understand LF^MOW this way:
in form, it is always plural;
in meaning, it is most often plural, but it can also be singular.
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