From: "Jerry Shepherd" <jerry.shepherd AT taylor-edu.ca>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [b-hebrew] Question on Tetragrammaton
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:00:36 -0600
Dr. Jerry E. Shepherd
Associate Professor of Old Testament
Taylor Seminary
11525 - 23 Avenue
Edmonton, AB T6J 4T3
CANADA
Office: (780)431-5250
Home: (780)434-1164
Fax: (780)436-9416
Email: jerry.shepherd AT taylor-edu.ca
Internet: http://www.taylor-edu.ca
-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Peter Kirk
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 4:57 PM
To: Harold Holmyard
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] verb forms - Isaiah 56:6-7 was dying you shall die
On 17/04/2007 21:17, Harold Holmyard wrote:
> Isaac Fried wrote:
>
>> ...
>>
>> How do I know all this? If you come to think of it, it cannot be
>> otherwise.
>>
>>
>>
> HH: Of course it can be otherwise. The verbs could always have had
> suffixes and prefixes. Separate independent pronouns are used together
> with verbs with prefixes and suffixes sometimes.
>
>
On this one I am more or less with Isaac, on the general principle if
not the detail. It seems clear that in a wide variety of language
families including Semitic, personal endings of verbs etc (suffixes and
occasionally prefixes) are generally forms of the relevant personal
pronouns, which were initially separate and gradually became merged with
the roots, with phonological changes resulting from that. This merging
of roots and suffixes had probably already taken place in the earliest
reconstructable proto-forms of the language families I am familiar with:
Indo-European, Semitic and Turkic. Indeed the similarities between the
endings in these languages suggest that the merger may have taken place
even before these three families split (if indeed they did).
Nevertheless there are clear indications that such a process did take
place in the remote past.
Proto-Indo-European
pronouns* me te tom nos wos tons
tem tehns
verb suffixes -mi -si -ti -mes -the -nti
Proto-Turkic
pronouns man- san- in- biz siz
verb suffixes -man -syng -syghyn -lyq -synglar -syghynlar
-myn -synyz
Proto-Semitic
pronouns
verb suffixes
(I will leave others to fill in this last section.)
* PIE pronouns given in the accusative as nominatives are sometimes very
different.
It seems to me that there is enough commonality between all of these
lists to propose a common origin for all three sets of suffixes and all
three sets of pronouns.