Hebrew - A Further Clarification

Here I try to throw some further light on the Hebraic forms of *copula
depletion.*

The Hebraic convention of dropping [depleting] the copula is not something
unique to Hebrew. There is also no verb "to be" in Arabic, but the verb of
existence ka:na / ya-ku:n is used when a temporal reference is required. Many
Indonesian languages are the similar in this practice.
Russian too drops the copula in the present tense, so that the sentence:

*Ivan soldat,* is rendered as: *Ivan is a soldier.* Even though the
sentence lacks an *is* EVERY Russian understands what is meant.

The point of all this is that the Jews, Arabs and Russians and the speakers
of other languages which exhibit *copula depletion* [as it is called by
linguists] KNOW what is meant, because that is the convention amongst ALL speakers
of that language. Thus if God DID in reality use the words:
"Eyeh-Asher-Ehyeh," Moses and any other Aramaic/Hebrew speaker at the time would have
understood PERFECTLY what God meant when he used the term. It is only when the
Hebraic is rendered into English or German or Dutch, etc., that problems of
misunderstanding and confusion arise. In this way Hebraic is NOT a linguistic
inexactitude which I first suggested, *at the limits of HEBRAIC narrative power,*
for HEBREW speakers, but only for speakers of other languages into which the
Hebraic biblical tautology under discussion is translated.


Regards,

Jud

Personal Website:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
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