[Mesorah] Feminine plural imperative

Tue Jan 24 10:10:51 PST 2017

Joshua is absolutely correct that in the pasuq, v'hamitten functions as an imperative.  But it is actually a jussive form with the vav hahippukh which continues the tense of the verb at the beginning of the phrase, here "ur'iten."  It is just like "watt'chayyena" in 1;18, which continues the tense of " ‘asiten."

But this is all irrelevant to my point.  Even were it to be an imperative, the ending would be -n/-na, as opposed to a perfect form like "‘asiten." The point is that these endings come from completely different sources in older Semitic. The form -na is an alternative of the form -n, just as lakh and l'kha are alternatvie forms.  This is also why the form l'kha or 'ahavta is usually written without a "he" in the Torah, since the qamatz at the end was a dialectal variant. Some places had it , some did not, the k'tiv usually does not have a "he" because different communities would read it differently, and it did not change the meaning.

Whereas the -n at the end of " ‘asiten" does change the meaning, and its source is not in a vowel that sometimes appears and sometimes does not.

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel

________________________________
From: Joshua Meisner <jmeisner at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2017 12:16 PM
To: Mandel, Seth
Cc: Zev Sero; elazar teitz; mesorah at aishdas.org
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] Feminine plural imperative

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<mailto: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<mailto:mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org>> on behalf of elazar teitz via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org<mailto:mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>>
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2017 4:03 AM
To: Zev Sero
Cc: mesorah at aishdas.org<mailto: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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