Re: verbs = nouns? (in Hebrew)

On 10 Jan, John Cowan wrote:

>>     I guess that in ancient times, policemen weren't expected to be
>> social-workers, psychologists, negotiators, investigators, etc. as they
are
>> today.
>
>More like judge, jury, and executioner, it sounds like!
No, there were judges as well as police (whatever their functions).
In all fairness to the judges, it must be pointed out that there are
ancient laws that state how judges are to appear in court so as to
impress the people coming before them, so that they would accept
the judge's decision. One of these, still used today, is for the judge
to sit higher than anyone else. Another (far more practical) was
for the judge to  have out on the table before him, within easy reach,
a large,  frightful weapon which he was ready to use, should the need
arise.
(Judges in those days were not frail old men ).
There was order in _those_ courts,  for sure!  :-)


<snip>

I wrote:
>> Among the children
>> whose speech I treat, there are some who consistantly
>> pronounce -alav as /alo/.
>
    John asked:
>In the same sense that many American children consistently
>pronounce "isn't" as /eInt/?
>
    Steg wrote:

>I don't know.... saying _`alo_ instead of _`alav_ for "on-him" is a
>generalization based on _bo_ "with/in him", _ito_ "with him", _oto_
>"(accusative) him", and _-o_ "his".  oh yeah, that reminds me... also
>_shelo_ "his" and _lo_ "to him". and _bishvilo_ "for him".
>-av words are:
>_`alav_ "on him"
>_bil`adav_ "without him"
>_eilav_ "to him"
>and probably the archaic _`imadav_, "with him"

    Interesting.  Could be.

    I had always assumed that it had something to do with
a "spelling pronounciation". After the last consonant
of the root in these cases, there follows "yod-vav".
It looks like it should be pronounced  /-ayo/ or /-ayu/,
thus:    on him    /'alayo/   etc.
    The problem is that in Israeli pronounciation, the yod
is silent and the vav is considered to have the consonantal
value /v/ rather than the vowel value /o/ or /u/. Thus there
is a discrepancy between what a child sees and what he
is expected to say. It seemed to me that some kids were
opting for a "half-written" version when speaking,
correctly dropping the "yod", but giving
the "vav" a vowel value. (Which always seemed strange to me,
considering that they learn to speak many years before they learn to read!)
    BTW, this does in fact happen with the word for "do"  /'ose/.
The "s" is written with the letter "sin", which looks almost exactly like
the letter "shin" which stands for /S/. The only difference between
the two is the placement of a dot at the top of the letter (and
in adult-style writing, without vowel markings, that dot isn't
even there.) Kids will make the understandable mistake of
reading  /oSe/ for /ose/. But what is strange, is that, when discussing
the text, some kids will continue to make that mistake in their speech,
although normally they would pronounce the word correctly!

Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.