[Mesorah] Feminine plural imperative

[Joshua Meisner via Mesorah]

R' Mandel,

I concede my lack of understanding, even after using the web to attempt to
comb over my ignorance of grammar, of the difference between the perfect
and imperfect forms that you describe.  "Hamiten" appears to be an
imperative and "tichtovna" appears be an indicative, while it sounds like
the distinction between perfect and imperfect would be one between "katav"
and "haya koteiv", and I can't even quite imagine what an imperfect
imperative would look like.

Be that as it may, how would we explain the difference between "kir'en lo
v'yochal lachem" and "k'rena li Mara", where the words seem to fill the
same grammatical function?  The suggestion of R' Teitz appears to fit this
distinction well.

Joshua Meisner



On Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 10:11 AM, Mandel, Seth via Mesorah <
mesorah at lists.aishdas.org> wrote:

> 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> 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           be a brilliant year for us all
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>
>
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