[Mesorah] cholov shechalovoi goy

Wed Sep 19 16:10:52 PDT 2007

It is indeed an interesting question what mishqal tallit would belong to, if we were sure that that were the word.  As I pointed out, there is no source for the form tallit, other than Ben Yehudah, who obviously thought it was from the root tll (not a Hebrew root) and put it in the mishqal XaYZit, where XY and Z represent the root consonants.  I am not sure there is such a mishqal; none of your examples belong to such a mishqal.  I, of course, think the question is moot, since I have argued (and I have seen nothing to cause me to question my arguments) that either the word is not Hebrew at all, or, at the very least, was heavily influenced and reshaped by non-Hebrew words, which are clearly attested in the sources.

Much has been made out the plural form talliyot, attested in Zavim 4:5.  Such a plural would indeed indicate that HaZaL conceived of the word as the regular Hebrew plural of tallit, like haniyot (spears) from hanit. Unfortunately, that is not the form attested in the early mss.  The Kaufmann mss. has the form as t'li'ot (the first " ' " representing a sh'va, the second representing an aleph).  The singular form in said mss, as I noted before, is t'let.  Not only does the word never have a dagesh, in any of its occurrences, but the plural is not even the Hebrew plural: it has an aleph between the vowel i and the plural suffix.
Explain these forms?  I do not have an explanation, nor do I need one for my argument, which is that the forms were felt to be non-Hebrew ones.  How does one form the plural of a non-Hebrew word?  Various strategems, but not following rules of Hebrew words.  I believe that the basic form was mixed with (i)stole, the final tav added as an Aramaic feminine suffix, and so t'le'ot or t'li'ot is as good a form as any.

Far be it from me to opine as to where the stess fell on this word in the time of HaZal, but I do not think we can argue from the mishqal.  Nor do I have a quarrel with those who continue to believe that the word is really a Hebrew one, but they have to come up with some convincing explanation for the actual forms that are attested.  Ben Yehuda is not a source as to what words in L'shon HaZaL were.  He used L'shon HaZaL as a source for his lexicon, but scorned both the content and the grammar of L'shon HaZaL.  Considering his attested views about the Torah sheb'al Peh, it is ironic (if not mind-boggling) that his forms are considered to have anything valid to say about L'shon HaZaL, whether in lexicography, morphology, or syntax.  In this case, as with many, many others, it is clear to me that Ben Yehudah took the Yiddish form as the source and then changed it and reshaped it to meet his ideas and expectations of what Hebrew should look like.  He may have accomplished a lot, but loyalty to sources and accuracy were not part of his beliefs or actions.

Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:43:35 +0200
To: mesorah at aishdas.org
From: laser at ieee.org
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] cholov shechalovoi goy

At 10:38 17-09-07 -0400, Zev Sero stated the
following:

Ira L. Jacobson
wrote:

What follows was NOT written by your faithful servant.  Rather, I
took issue with it.  So any implication that I wrote that statement
was not quite accurate.

At 23:53 16-09-07 -0400, Richard
Wolpoe stated the following:

I concur with Micha's point.
Baruch Shkivanti becasue i have been advocating this peshat in Tallis
Katan for years, i.e. a Tallis OF a Katan.

However, an Israelit friend of mine pointed out that
"Tallis"  may indeed be masculine.   His
Proof?  The plural is  Talisos  [Talitot] and NOT
Taliyot  which would correspond to  Ta'anis and
Taa'niyos.

How do you know?   A scan at

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/searchgh.htm comes up with no hits for
"talitot", but two hits for "taliyot", which are
actually the same reference, a mishna in Zavim that is quoted in Gemara
Shabbat.  It seems that Chazal rarely had occasion to refer to them
in the plural, so we can't be sure what the most common plural was. One
example is not statistically significant.

But perhaps more to the point,
bayit and zayit are mil`eil, while talit is milra

Again, how do you know?

That I did indeed write.  The answer to your question -- how do I
know this -- is that "talit" follows the pattern of all other
four-letter (or more) singular nouns I know that end in hiriq yod
tav---such as  ta`anit, zavit, she-erit, zekhukhit or
raqdanit.  I am aware that there are exceptions to the rule for
forming plurals, such as berit and hazit.   But we assume that
"talit" is a Hebrew word and it follows the rules of Hebrew
grammar.  Even foreign words used in Hebrew follow the rules of
Hebrew grammar.

Whereas, on the other hand, bayit and zayit have only three letters
each.  They are in the class of shemot mil`eli'im mishorashim
nehshalim, whereas the first group are simply mele`im besiyyum hiriq yod
tav.

~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=

IRA L. JACOBSON         

=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~

mailto:laser at ieee.org

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