Plural, or collective?

[kwrandolph]

In Tanakh, often we find feminine nouns that refer to more than one given a suffix that’s merely a tau, rather than a waw tau that is the normal feminine plural. The Masoretes assumed that they were defective plurals, so pointed them as plurals.

But were they true plurals?

Or were they collectives? That refer to a group rather than a multiplied single?

What do you think?

Karl W. Randolph.

[S_Walch]

Well to answer such a question we'd have to look at each feminine noun in Tanakh and the contexts they're used; check these against the Dead Sea Scrolls to see whether there's any variants that might show that the Masoretes just had a defective text; and then check to see whether this just applies to certain feminine nouns coming from a similar root.

Not the simplest of tasks

Do you have a selection to show a collective rather than just a plural meaning?

Edit:

To give an example, let's look at מאור, and the only three times it appears as a plural (Gen 1:14, 15, 16).

The Masoretic text has מְאֹרֹת֙ in v14; מְאוֹרֹת֙ in v15; and מְּאֹרֹ֖ת in v16. Same word, spelt with the plene spelling only once (v15).

Looking at the Dead Sea Scrolls however, we find in the three manuscripts that contain these three verses (4QGenb, 4QGeng, 4QGenk):

4QGenb only ever has the spelling מארת in all three verses.

4QGeng on the other hand has the spelling מארות in v14 and v16; v15 is unfortunately defective at the beginning, but judging by v14 and v16, it probably contained the same spelling.

And 4QGenk uses מארות in all three verses.

As we can see then, 4QGeng and 4QGenk both follow the conventional spelling for the plural-feminine noun, whereas 4QGenb kinda follows the Masoretic. None of the DSS provide the spelling of מאורת though.

I'll admit, I was quite surprised to find this quite so soon. I'm more or less going with the Masorites having a defective text/opting to omit the vav for some reason.

[kwrandolph]

Well to answer such a question we'd have to look at each feminine noun in Tanakh and the contexts they're used; check these against the Dead Sea Scrolls to see whether there's any variants that might show that the Masoretes just had a defective text; and then check to see whether this just applies to certain feminine nouns coming from a similar root.

Not the simplest of tasks

If you’ve watched me these last few years, I tend to ask off-the-wall questions like this that no one has asked before. Sometimes I’m wrong, sometimes I’m on to something.

Do you have a selection to show a collective rather than just a plural meaning?

Not directly. It’s just something of “Do you suppose…?” Last time I read Tanakh through, it was looking for present referent conversations in prose. Maybe I should look for this this time through.

…

I'll admit, I was quite surprised to find this quite so soon. I'm more or less going with the Masorites having a defective text/opting to omit the vav for some reason.

I made the same supposition all along, but now I’m not so sure. It’s clear from the pointing that the Masoretes assumed that they had a defective text, so pointed it as a standard plural.

Karl W. Randolph.

[S_Walch]

Yes, it is a bit strange that they would do that. But judging from the Dead Sea Scrolls, when it comes to the letter Waw, it can be dropped and/or added quite willy-nilly.

This is either due to scribal error, or scribal preference.

[Jemoh66]

For all intents and purposes, a collective is a plural. One of the oddities of American English is that we treat collectives as a singular thing. Notice how across the pond the Brits still treat collectives as plurals.
"The Ford Company have released a statement..." or "Chelsea have engaged a new coach." This is quite the norm, and every language I have ever worked on in linguistic exercises treats a collective as a plural. Liquids are a good example: mayim, water (BH), or maziwa (milk in Swahili where the ma- prefix is a dual plural).

Jonathan Mohler

[Isaac Fried]

This maziwa, 'milk', in Swahili sounds to me like מה זיבה, 'what oozes out'. From Arabic via Hebrew?

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[Jemoh66]

This maziwa, 'milk', in Swahili sounds to me like מה זיבה, 'what oozes out'. From Arabic via Hebrew?

Isaac Fried, Boston University

That certainly would make a great play-on-words. But actually languages don't borrow words like milk. Milk like the cow is universal to all cultures. Africans were milking their cows long before interaction with Arabs. Much like they don't borrow body part words. If MAZIWA were borrowed, the Swahili reflex would be to put it in the MA- Noun Class, either because it started with MA and/or because it is a liquid. For example KITABU, book is obviously borrowed. It is considered in Swahili to be a KI- word (a Noun Class that contains inanimate objects), even though the word came into the language with the KI syllable. It acts now as if its root were TABU, so in the plural it becomes VITABU. Back to MAZIWA; this word is a bonafide Bantu word. You might be interested to know Bantu languages share a lot of words that indicate a common parent language (Edenic). For example in Luyia, AMATSI, water, and Swahili MAJI, water. These words are related to BH MAYIM, but they are not borrowed.

Jonathan Mohler

[Isaac Fried]

Words are not bastards nor orphans, they have all a pedigree יחוס and often lots of cousins. So the question is what are the relatives of this word MA-ZIWAH, namely, what other words in this African language are derived from the kindred roots YW, or CW, or, SW, or DW, or $W, TW, or ZB, or CB, or, SB, or DB, or $B, or TB? Then we could try and figure out what they conceptually mean by "milk".

This is what the the Online Etymology Dictionary has to say about the English word 'milk':
Old English meoluc (West Saxon), milc (Anglian), from Proto-Germanic *meluks "milk" (cognates: Old Norse mjolk, Old Frisian melok, Old Saxon miluk, Dutch melk, Old High German miluh, German Milch, Gothic miluks), from *melk- "to milk," from PIE root *melg- "to wipe, to rub off," also "to stroke; to milk," in reference to the hand motion involved in milking an animal (cognates: Greek amelgein, Latin mulgere, Old Church Slavonic mlesti, Lithuanian melžu "to milk," Old Irish melg "milk," Sanskrit marjati "wipes off"). Old Church Slavonic noun meleko (Russian moloko, Czech mleko) is considered to be adopted from Germanic.

The Hebrew חָלָב, 'milk', is related to חֵלֶב (related in turn to חלף, 'pass over', and the post biblical קלף, 'peel'), 'body fat, tallow', to which the milk products cheese and butter resemble in consistency and color; or from the possible ancient Inference that milk is melted body fat drained to the udder.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[Isaac Fried]

The מְאֹרֹת of Gen. 1:4 (מָאוֹר = מה-אוֹר) calls to mind the לֻלָאֹת = על-הוא-על-הוא-את, 'loops, spirals', of Ex. 26:5.
The fact that the second L of LULAOT is dageshless suggests that at the time the dgeshin were entered into the biblical text, the word was written in full as לוּלאת, or even לוּלאוֹת.
A plene writing can do without a dagesh, as the reading is made obvious by the וּ, with no need anymore for the same reading hint provided by the dagesh, also introduced for the purpose of serving as a reading prop in the niqudless text.

Isaac Fried, Boston University