[Hebrew] Finding Masc. Plural Noun with Fem. Ending

[mtpeterson]

Greetings,

 

Here's an interesting problem. It turns out that in biblical Hebrew there are a small number of {masc,fem} nouns with {fem,masc} plural endings. I would like to create a search (construct or otherwise) to find these words. For example, how would I find a masculine plural noun having a feminine ending (or vice versa)?

 

I've been trying to set up such a search using the construct search engine and have not been able to figure it out. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Blessings,

 

Michael

[David Lang]

Without a specific example to work from, here are a couple guesses. Note that the searches are formatted here from left to right, but if you copy and paste them into a Hebrew search, they should reverse and work properly.

 

1. Search for a masculine noun tag followed by a feminine suffix tag: [NOUN masc] [sUFFIX feminine plural]

(this will find masculine nouns with fem. plur. pronominal suffixes, which I suspect is not what you mean.)

 

2. Search for a masculine noun tag, then an @ symbol, then a wildcard search for an inflected form ending with ות, like this: [NOUN masc]@"=*wt"

(I think this returns the results you're after.)

 

You can obviously reverse these two searches to find feminine nouns with masculine plural endings.

 

Hope this helps.

[mtpeterson]

Thanks, David. I'll give this a shot when I get home.

 

Blessings,

 

M

[mtpeterson]

David,

 

No joy, David, but I appreciate your suggestions. You're right in that my desire is to find all masculine[feminine] plural nouns with a feminine[masculine] suffix. So, when I used the search string you recommended, i.e.,  [NOUN masculine]@"=*wt"

 

This error the popped up.

 

The selected word cannont be found in the "HMT-W4" text.

 

I do not know to what the HMT-W4 text refers, but I'm using the tagged Biblia Hebaica and my test [simple] searches worked just fine.

 

Also, I entered the string into the command line using the [search] menu.

 

I'll go back and watch the relevent help videos again and see if that doesn't trigger an 'aha' event.

 

Blessings,

 

M

[JonathanHuber]

That's just the module name for the Biblia Hebraica (HMT = Hebrew Masoretic Text). The following search worked for me. Use the character palate (under Window in the menu bar) to enter the holem directly after the asterisk.

 

 [NOUN masculine] @"=*ֹת"

[mtpeterson]

Just to close this thread. First, thanks to all that replied. I was able to construct a successful search of all masculine plural nouns with a feminine plural ending and vice versa. T

 

Just a quick note, however. There are a lot more of these bad boys than I had been told. But so far, every word I've checked has been right.

 

FYI, I've found 848 masc plural nouns w/ fem endings (e.g., מְּאֹרֹ֖ת (lights)) and 852 fem plural nouns with the masc. ending (e.g., עִזִּים֮ (goats))

 

Pretty neat.

 

Blessings,

 

Michael