john, i do really believe that semitic languages do show an ancient bilateral verb stratum throughout. but i also agree with you that establishing specific evidence may be difficult in most cases. incluindo ($$ / (T.T.
in view of ishinan's analysis, i observe the hebrew L(S (chew) and (SH (dough). by the way, concerning the biblical root $XH i see clearly an underlying biradical root $X = low (strong 7807, job 22:29). also the root $XX (21 occurrences, strong 7817) shows that the H was not necessarily radical. could H$TXWH be the result of a fusion of two roots: $X+XWH rather than change of one root to another? nir cohen Hmm, Nir, I'm not sure that I'd want to try and draw too many conclusions from biliteral roots myself. I agree that they are possible, and indeed the biliteral root is supposed to be the origin of the triliteral root, but that's in the deeply obscure pre-history of the Semitic languages. To really systematicaly get to grips with biliteral roots I suspect you'd need a wide knowledge of the earliest Semitic languages and of the other Afro-Asiatic languages too, at least Egyptian. It would be a fascinating study, I agree, but the material is likely to be too vague and to early to be of any demonstrable help in understanding Hebrew as we know it. On the other hand, identifying the mechanisms for root production would be interesting where a root seems to exist in Hebrew alone. שחה in our recent discussion is a good case in point, where we can see where the one root transforms into - or is read as - another and a new root comes ino existence. Naturally, if biliteral proto-roots catch your interest, however, that's likely to be personally helpful, so don't be put off by me. John Leake _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
