Hi Nir and Yigal, What about regular declensions of 'ax' and 'ab' - 'axykha' 'axyv' etc, or 'avykha' 'avyw' etc. Note the letter "Yud" is preserved throughout the declension, and is also retained in the consruct, e.g. 'axy-hamelekh' or 'avy-hayeled'.
Clearly this points an early PS vowel following the two consonants of these nouns. Cf. with 'abw' (abu) in Arabic. However, this ancient vowel was not preserved in all names of this type, e.g. 'Axav', 'avram'. For a different comparison look at the Heb. noun ')em' (mother) in declension - no 'yud' there. Uri Hurwitz Yigal Levin On Behalf Of Nir cohen - Subject: [b-hebrew] xiram ...the middle Y in many semitic names, when used to fuse together two separate words, such as AX-Y-RM etc, should be interpreted firstly as a phonetic process, and only secondly as a grammatical process... _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
