Re: taliboo

On Fri, 21 Dec 2001 15:52:09 +0200 Dan Sulani <dnsulani@...>
writes:
> In Hebrew, the word for prayer / tfila/ comes from the root  p-l-l,
> which my
> dictionary connects to the Akkadian word <palalum> which apparantly
> means something like "to sit in judgement". Interestingly, Hebrew
> also has
> the word /plili/ (= criminal [used as an adj.]) from the same root.
> The verb
> /pilel/ does, in fact, have a sense of "to beg" as in begging for
> mercy before a judge.
-

I remember learning in high school that the idea behind _lehitpaleil_ is
'to judge oneself'; i assume that means in the sense of recognizing your
insignifinace/unworthiness/whatever before Deity.

>     Anyhow,  I'm starting to get out of my depth in Semitic
> linguistics
> here, so my question in all of this is: does anybody here know what
> the
> _root_  of the Arabic word <talib> is? It may not  include the
> initial <t>.
> And as for what follows the <t> in Hebrew and Arabic
> ( p-l in Hebrew, l-b in Arabic),
> it's not unknown for Hebrew to transpose two of the letters
> of the root as found in other Semitic langs.
> The question, then is: which version is older:
> bilabial followed by lateral, or lateral followed by bilabial?
> Does anyone know how it is in proto-Afro-Asiatic?
> Dan Sulani
-

I don't know about proto-AA, but i'm sure that the root of /t'a:lib/ is
/t'lb/, /t'/ being the emphatic /t/.  /t'a:lib/ is the same pattern as
/ka:tib/ ( = koteiv, 'writer').  _talmid_ on the other hand comes from
/lmd/, and the intial *non-emphatic* /t/ is just a prefix.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "i guess it would be nice if i could touch your body"
     ~ a random song on the radio at the moment
       oh wait, it's that song where the singer screams the word "faith"
over and over again...