david, it has always been clear to me that many very ancient semitic roots were bi-consonantal rather than tri-consonantal.
B), $B, GZ, BN, QM, GR, PL, TR, SM, LK, CM, DK, HK, $X, LP, RM, CD, GL, PR, $L, CP, QB, QR, .... and that they represent the older semitic root structure. assuming, say, 15-16 consonants this would give some 250 roots, clearly not enough for a full-fledged language. gradually, a third (and even fourth) consonant was added, providing some 3000-4000 roots, which are quite sufficient. the third consonant, added to the two extent consonants, served to refine and sub-divide the original notion of the verb. clearly the process was not nearly as uniform as may appear from this description. nevertheless, i imagine that this process may be used as a timer for the separation of semitic into its branches/languages/dialects. then, in later hebrew, a third letter was forced into the original biconsonantal verbs in order to fit them into the general rule - a kind of a sodomite bed. the others that did not fit just disappeared. if i remember correctly, ancient egyptian had a similar consonant-adding mechanism, which also refined the meaning of the word. nir cohen >>> I was reading the wikipedia entry on arabic and came across this curious tidbit, any comments? "With research scientists realized that the triconsonantal root consists of: 1) two beginning sounds - a rootcell and 2) the third sound which is a precision element. I.e.: the rootcell f-r has the meaning of scattering in space. Then, f-r-g means cleaving, f-r-d - making separate, f-r-s - tearing to pieces; the rootcell f-q means the main idea of absence, so: f-q-d means loosing, f-q-r means poverty and so on. " Shavua Tov, David Kolinsky Monterey, CA _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
