Re: Chevraqis: a sketch

On Thu, 10 Aug 2000 15:45:23 -0500 Terrence Donnelly
<pag000@...> writes:
> FWIW, Ancient Egyptian, another member of the Afrosemitic family,
>  had consonantal roots, and also had infinitives.
> They were an integral part of the language.  For example, the
> "present progressive" translates most literally as "I am upon
> to-go" = "I am going" (in Egyptian: iw.i Hr Smt).  Another example
> is a literary formula: Smt pw iri.n.i "It is a to-go that I did" =
> "I went". Egyptian did not, however, have the various verb types
> of Arabic or Hebrew, so maybe a different logic prevails in
> languages that do.
>
> -- Terry
-

Maybe it's an Arabic thing....because Hebrew and Aramaic (both in the
Northwest family of Semitic, i think) both have infinitives, which are
usually (in Hebrew at least) the same or very similar to the masculine
singular imperative.  However, the pure passive paradigms (pu`al &
huf`al), which lack imperatives, do have infinitives (although they're
rare).

In Biblical Hebrew, the pure infinitive is used mostly for
intensification:

_yikhtov_ = "he will write"
_katov yikhtov_ = "he will surely write", literally something like "write
he will write"

_hugad_ = "it was told"
_hageid hugad_ = "it was surely told", lit. "be-told it was told"

It can also be used as a kind of more "infinitive", noun-like
construction:

_mi biqeish zot mikem, *remos* hhatzeirai?_ = "who asked this of you, *to
trample* my courts?", where "to trample" could also be translated more
literally as "a trampling of".

I just looked in my _101 Hebrew Verbs_ book, and it seems to split the
infinitive into an infinitive and a gerund...in that case, _remos_ would
be the gerund, and the intensification examples would really be
infinitives.

The gerund can be used with the "4 prepositions", _b-_ "in/by", _k-_
"as", _l-_ "to", and _m-_ "from".
However, after the Biblical period, all uses of the infinitive/gerund
forms disappeared, except for the "to" form, used like in English,
_lirmos_ "to trample".  The pure passive paradigms, however, lacking a
gerund, do not have this new infinitive form.

Therefore, in Modern Hebrew it is possible to say _mi rotzeh
leheihareig?_ "who wants to be killed?", with HRG in the _nif`al_ passive
paradigm (which i've heard was originally a reflexive), it is impossible
to say _ma `atid *ledubar?_ "what is destined *to-be-said?".

The Aramaic cognate form of Hebrew's _l-_ infinitive usually begins
_lem-_, such as _leminttar_ "to guard" or _lemeizeil_ "to go", from what
i've seen.


-Stephen (Steg)