Biblical Hebrew Bal and Privative Negation. (18th August 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sjörs, Ambjörn
• Is Part Of: Journal of Semitic studies. Volume 63:Number 2(2018)
• Page Start: 297
• Page End: 322
• Publication Date: 2018-08-18
• Subjects: Semitic philology -- Periodicals; Jews -- Periodicals; 299.2
• DOI: 10.1093/jss/fgy001
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0022-4480

Abstract

Abstract: The Biblical Hebrew lexeme bal has been described as a poetic and prophetic synonym with lō' in previous research. However, cognate morphemes in the Semitic languages outside Northwest Semitic, as well as other Biblical Hebrew lexemes derived from the relevant root morpheme, e.g. bǝlî and lǝḇiltî, may be identified with privative grammatical morphemes, i.e. grammatical morphemes that cancel an association. It is argued that, most of the time, bal too should be identified with privative negation, and that it is a poetic and prophetic synonym with lǝḇiltî (with different co-occurrence restrictions). Other times, the uses of bal can be explained as typical for the grammaticalization of privative expressions. The use of bal as a negator, for example, can be explained in terms of the grammaticalization of a conventional implicature, by which a salient feature, privation, became bleached semantically in favour of its implicature, negation. 1