Sur les traces de la racine trilitère dans la grammaire hébraïque

Abstract

The notion of triconsonantal roots was borrowed from the Arabic tradition and a great deal of creativity was required in order to apply it to Hebrew grammar. Judah Ḥayyuj (Fez, 950 – Cordoba, ca 1000) was the first to note that weak consonants have a different comportment, that they may not be visible in certain verbal forms, but remain present in the theoretical basic form. His work was carried on by Jonah ibn Janaḥ (Cordoba, ca 985/990 – ca 1050), whose writings were adapted or translated into Hebrew. This led to the diffusion of Hebrew grammatical knowledge in Christian Europe and the adoption of the theory of triconsonantal roots. Dictionaries of roots patterned on Ibn Janaḥ’s Kitāb al-uṣūl, which are a convenient tool for classifying the lexicon of biblical words, became popular in medieval Provence. A major difficulty remained, namely how to identify the root of a complex nominal or verbal form. Profiat Duran (Perpignan < 1360 – ca 1414) was the first author to include in his grammar, Maʿaseh efod, a chapter describing the different methods for identifying the roots. This chapter, through adaptations or summaries, was often used by the Christian humanists in their linguistic works down to the nineteenth century.

Keywords

• Qimḥi (David)
• Hebrew grammatical tradition
• identifying roots in Hebrew
• Duran (Profiat)
• Pagnini (Sancte)
• triconsonantal roots in Hebrew