Here is another example from Hebrew, I have just met with today. From
the Hebrew root כבה KBH, 'extinguish', we have the "lexeme" (or
googleme) כבאי KABA-IY, 'firefighter'. As I see it, the ending -IY
of KABA-IY is the "smoothed" personal pronoun, or identity marker,
היא HIY referring to the person performing the act KABAH, and
corresponding to the ending -er in the English word firefight-er. The
corresponding feminine form כבאית KABA-IY-T, with the additional
marker את AT, is, of course, not listed separately. But, there is
another כבאית KABA-IY-T in which the -IY-T ending refers, not a
firefighteress, but rather to an engine מכונית MKON-IYT.
Isaac Fried, Boston University
On May 4, 2013, at 7:37 PM, Ruth Mathys wrote:
I've seen it claimed here repeatedly that a single lexeme
necessarily has a
single meaning in all the contexts it is used in. I think that is
nonsense.
I won't attempt to prove it from Hebrew, but it is easy to
demonstrate from
English.
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