Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/249



Brockelmann,, p. 329 ff.

Nouns are by their derivation either primitive, i.e. cannot be referred to any verbal stem at present extant (see ), such as, (but see both words in the Lexicon; according to Stade and others , , &c., are children’s words and terms of endearment, and so really primitive nouns), or derivative, i.e. either Derivativa verbalia (–), e.g. , , , from , or less frequently Derivativa denominativa , e.g. , from.

Rem. 1. The earlier grammarians consider the verb alone as stem, and therefore all nouns as verbals, dividing them into (a) Formae nudae, i.e. such as have only the three (or two) radicals, and (b) Formae auctae, such as have formative letters or syllables added at the beginning or end, e.g.,. The formative letters used for this purpose are, and the treatment of nouns formerly followed this order.

According to the view of roots and stems presented in, nouns (other than denominatives) are derived not from the verbal stem, but either from the (abstract) root or from the still undefined stem. In the following pages, however, the arrangement according to the verbal stem is retained as being simpler for the beginner. Cf. .

2. Compound nouns as appellatives are very rare in Hebrew, e.g. . On the other hand, they very frequently occur as proper names, e.g. (man of God),  (Yahwe raises up),  (Yahwe gave), &c.

The number of primitive nouns in the sense used in is small, since nouns, which in other languages are represented as independent noun-stems, can easily be traced back in Hebrew to the verbal idea, e.g. names of animals and natural objects, as  (prop. shaggy, from ),  (prop. prickly, also from ),  (prop. pia, sc. avis),  (from =). Thus there remain only a few nouns, e.g. several names of members of the body in men or beasts, to which a corresponding verbal stem cannot be assigned at all, or at any rate only indirectly (from other Semitic dialects), as,.