[Mesorah] Feminine plural imperative

[Mandel, Seth via Mesorah]

The perfect and imperfect forms have nothing to do with each other.  hamitten is perfect, the fm. of hamittem.  Compare Aramaic k'tavtun (masc) vs k'tavtin (fm).

In contrast, in the imperfect, the Hebrew would have in 3rd person yikht'vu (m) vs. tikhtovna (f), whereas Aramaic would have yikht'vun (m) vs. yikht'van (fm).

Normal rules from ProtoSemitic to Hebrew vs. Aramaic would predict that in the imperfect forms in Hebrew would have no -n at that end in masculine, and would have either -n or -na in the feminine.  Cf. lakh (to you) in Aramaic corresponds to Hebrew l'kha or lakh (pausal).


Seth Mandel
________________________________
From: Mesorah <mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org> on behalf of elazar teitz via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2017 4:03 AM
To: Zev Sero
Cc: mesorah at aishdas.org
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] Feminine plural imperative

     Could it be that the nun suffix is for a command, while the "na" is for a request (as in "ts'ena urena" and "leichna shovna" (i.e., as though it were written "ts'en na")?

EMT

On Mon, Jan 23, 2017 at 10:49 PM, Zev Sero via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org<mailto:mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>> wrote:
What is the standard Biblical suffix for the feminine plural imperative?  -n, or -na?   I had always thought it was -na, as in "ts'ena ur'ena", and that "kiren lo" in last week's parsha is an exception.  But someone pointed out to me that there's also "vahamiten" in the same parsha, and claimed that in the language of the Chumash this is the standard form, but it had changed by the time Shir Hashirim was written.  Can anyone shed light on this?

--
Zev Sero                May 2017, with its *nine* days of Chanukah,
zev at sero.name<mailto:zev at sero.name>           be a brilliant year for us all
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