Re: nouns (substantive and adjective) [was: verbs = nouns?]

At 7:33 pm -0500 11/1/01, Steg Belsky wrote:
[....]
>
>GENITIVE?
>Hrm.  As far as i know, Hebrew has no genetive.  Unless they use some
>kind of name (maybe nominative?) for construct-case ("blah-blah of") and
>use "genetive" for non-construct.
I quote:
"OF THE STATE OF CONSTRUCTION
Q. What is meant by this?
A. To express the genitive relation in Hebrew, the word which should stand
in the genitive remains unchanged, and is merely connected more intimately
with the preceeding _governing word_ in the pronunciation: hence this word,
as the tone hastens to the latter, is mostly shortened either in respect to
consonants or vowels, and is said to be in the _state of construction_,
e.g. [Heb.] _hand_, [Heb.] _hand of Jehovah_.  [Vowel in Hebrew for _hand_
is different in the two examples]
When a noun has no genitive after it, it stands in the _absolute_ state."

Thus the author is using 'genitive' not to denote an inflected form of a
noun as in Greek or Latin (or Classical Arabic), but a _relation_ of one
noun to another.  It is clear that the 'genitive' noun has exactly the same
form as a noun in the absolute state; the genitive, thuis, simply means a
noun following another which is in the "state of construction".

[....]
>
>vessels of silver = _kley kesef_
>garments of the holiness = _bigdey haqodesh_
>(construct nouns can't be definite, only non-construct can)
Sounds like Welsh: llyfrau'r bachgen
                   books   the boy = the boy's books

[....]
>>
>> I must apologize for not giving the Hebrew. I'm not fluent at
>> reading the
>> Hebrew alphabet nor do I know the ASCII convention for representing
>> some of
>> the letters.
>>
>> Ray.
>-
>
>It's okay, i think i got what the book was saying.  Btw, were the
>examples that it gave vocalized with all the vowels and other marks, or
>just consonant letters?
No, not just consonants - with all the vowels and other marks.

Ray.

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