Word Study

Leonard S. Berkowitz
Leonard S. Berkowitz Member Posts: 14 ✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

Consider that "been" is the same grammatical form as "seen" (despite a difference in pronunciation.

Hebrew has the same phenomenon, but the spellings are much more complex, because the vowel markings are so rich. I have a Hebrew word, the third word from the end in Numbers 31:15, that has an unusual constellation of vowels. In fact, one of the notes in BHS suggests a reading based on the Vulgate and other sources that is more normal.

Is there a way that I can search the Hebrew Bible so see whether there are other instances of these vowel markings -- the consonants can be different, and probably will be?

If so, how would I go about doing this? I am a newbie in the area of Word Study.

Thanks,

Leonard Berkowitz

Leonard S. Berkowitz

Comments

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 55,539

    Don't think that you are being ignored, I'm sure that several of us have puzzled over it and decided we were unqualified to answer. For your been/seen example, I feel comfortable going back to the classes of proto-IndoEuropean verbs and the historical phonological changes to be able to narrow the set of possible words e.g. it is not all verbs ending in -een - think careen, screen, keen, preen. To answer your question I'd have to know something about phonetic rules in Semitic languages and what makes the unusual constellation of vowels occur at all. However, you could try using the Search on the Hebrew with wild cards for the consonants - this works in English if one wants to sort through all the results.

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  • NetworkGeek
    NetworkGeek Member Posts: 3,813 ✭✭✭
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/146012#Comment_146012

    This is a great question, and I am interested in an answer too.  I looked in Andersen-Forbes and I don't see anything that would help with vowel markings.  In a way it's searching for combinations of "letters" (which happen to be vowels), I wonder if there is a way to enter the vowel markings into the text or lexeme field to match a given combination? If so I don't know how to do that.

    If it was English and not Hebrew, it would be a text search for a letter combination. I guess to be complete you would have to be able to search on dipthongs as well, another way of describing combinations of vowels.

    I would sure like to see what an expert has to say about this!

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