TomHChappell wrote:Maybe the word for "diabetes insipidus" comes from the word for "flood", but the word for "diabetes mellitus" comes from the word for "sugar"?
Nah, it's the same word, and it's pretty transparently derived from "sugar". Diabetes insipidus is apparently known as סוכרת תפלה
sukeret tfelah, literally "bland diabetes" (a calque of insipidus, I guess).
TomHChappell wrote:What's PSS? I'd have guessed PPS was pre-proto-Semitic, or that PAA was proto-AfroAsiatic, but I can't figure out PSS. "Proto-Southern-Semitic" seems unlikely.
"Pre-Proto-Semitic" + typo.
TomHChappell wrote:What about compounds, e.g. compound nouns?
Well, in Hebrew at least, those are generally handled using the construct state of one noun followed by the absolute or definite state of another. In some cases these are hyphenated, in others not. These are pluralized by pluralizing the construct noun, or made definite by converting the absolute state noun to the definite state.
בן-אדם
ben-'adam "human being" (lit. "son of Adam"): son.CONST.SG-Adam.ABSOL.SG
בני-אדם
bney-'adam "human beings" (lit. "sons of Adam"): con.CONST.PL-Adam.ABSOL.SG
תחנת רכבת
tachanat rakevet "train station": station.CONST.SG train.ABS.SG
תחנת הרכבת
tachanat harakevet "the train station": station.CONST.SG train.DEF.SG
There are a few more interesting methods; however, they are much less frequent. Occasionally you do come across true compounds that are just two nouns tacked together and treated as one, as in קולנוע
qolnoa` "cinema" (from קול
qol "voice" + נוע
noa` "movement"). You can also get portmanteaux, such as רמזור
ramzor "traffic light", from the verb רמז
ramaz "to indicate" + אור
'or "light", with the glottal stop elided.
Hebrew in particular is very fond of initialisms too, such as סכו"ם
sakum "cutlery, silverware", from סכין כף ומזלג
sakin, kaf umazleg "knife, spoon, and fork".
TomHChappell wrote:Are there gzarot, mishqalim, or minor binyanim, to handle biconsonantal roots/
Yes. In traditional Semitic grammatical notation biconsonantal roots are classified as having C2 be /w/ or /j/, so roots such as קם
qam "to get up" is Q-W-M, and שר
shar "sing" is SH-Y-R, though in practice this is really just a matter of convenience in order to keep with the general three-consonant pattern. More modern/technical descriptions will describe these roots as *qūm and *šīr, respectively, with an inherent vowel.
TomHChappell wrote:What about roots whose middle consonant is the same as one of their other consonants, that is, C1-C1-C2 or C1-C2-C2?
That is quite common, yes, and they have their own conjugation pattern. Historically many of these types of roots (C2=C3) come from Proto-Semitic biconsonantal roots where the second consonant was geminated.
Semitic languages generally show a lot of alternation between biconsonantal roots and roots with C2=C3, as it appears these were more or less interchangeable (eg, Proto-Semitic *subb <--> *sūb "turn", with the length freely being transferred between the consonant and vowel). As a result, many roots are historically attested both ways (eg, Biblical Hebrew biconsonantal סב
sav and triconsonantal סבב
savav).
Hebrew at the very least has incorporated this productively for some roots, which are biconsonantal in binyan pa`al but triconsonantal in others (eg, חם
cham "[be] hot" > חימם
chimem "heat, warm up". I believe other Semitic languages have done so as well to varying degrees.
TomHChappell wrote:If there are prefixes ending in a "whistling consonant" -- for instance /his/-, /hiz/-, /hiS/-, or /hitz/- -- and one of them is used with a root beginning with /t/, does that cause any homophony, polysemy, or ambiguity?
In theory, I suppose, but this doesn't really come up. The only one of those that is real is /hiS/-, which only appears on a very small set of Aramaic loan verbs.
TomHChappell wrote:What about a root t-C1-C2 or C1-t-C2, say with a prefix hi-?
That's not really a problem at all. This happens quite often (eg, T-CH-L > התחיל
hitchil "begin, start"), but it's clear that the prefix here is hi-, not hit-, because if you remove the hit- you only have two consonants left. Hif`il and Hitpa`el do not tolerate biconsonantal roots; they have to be augmented into triconsonantal roots somehow, such as by reduplicating the final consonant as I described above.
TomHChappell wrote:How do you form the intensive of a tetra-consonantal root? For instance, suppose /b-df-g/ is a root, do you get /b-dfdf-g/ in the intensive?
In Hebrew, and I believe for the other Semitic languages as well, tetraconsonantal roots are inherently considered intensive. It's a perfect "trick": the middle consonant of a triconsonantal intensive is doubled, so for a tetraconsonantal root you just stick in two consonants in that slot. That is, where a triconsonantal root has C1iC2C2eC3 (for Hebrew pi`el), a tetraconsonantal root has C1iC2C3eC4.
TomHChappell wrote:How do you form the intensive of a biconsonantal root?
Via augmentation: the biconsonantal root is converted into a triconsonantal root. This can be done in one of two ways:
1) Reduplicating the final consonant, so, for example, CH-M "[be] hot" becomes CH-M-M "heat".
2) Converting the inherent vowel that comes with all biconsonantal roots into a consonant. Hebrew has only two such vowels: /i:/ > /j/, /u:/ > /v/ (originally /w/). Other Semitic languages still preserve /a:/ as a possible root vowel, which generally becomes /?/ or /h/. I can't think of a Hebrew verbal example of this off the top of my head, but there is מת
met "die" (Proto-Semitic *mūt) > מות
mavet "death". If I remember correctly, this process is very productive in other Semitic languages such as Arabic, but in Hebrew has largely lost its productive force; however, this type of augmentation did convert many formerly biconsonantal roots into triconsonantal ones in Hebrew, such as Proto-Semitic *šāl "ask" > Hebrew שאל
sha'al "ask" (root *SH-'-L).
TomHChappell wrote:If there are pre-affricated or post-affricated or pre-aspirated or post-aspirated or pre-nasalized or post-nasalized consonant phonemes in an Afro-Asiatic Tri-Consonantal-Root-System language, how do speakers and hearers distinguish the "complex consonant phonemes" from a consonant-cluster?
Well, first of all, the triconsonantal system is only found in Semitic, not all of Afro-Asiatic, and Semitic has much less of that. In fact, the closest thing I can think of is how Modern Hebrew treats the affricate /ts/ as a single consonant. Some of those stranger features may be found in the South Arabian and African Semitic languages, however. While I imagine confusion might come up every now and then, I can't really see it being a problem. After all, what language doesn't have its ambiguity?
I can think of a few cases of ambiguity in Hebrew resulting from consonants dropping or merging, but that doesn't seriously harm the language's triconsonantal system, it just results in some reanalysis of the structures of individual roots. For example, Hebrew's (not just Modern, but historical) habit of dropping word-final glottal stops has resulted in some confusion between roots with final {?} and final {h}. For example, the root *Q-R-' "read, call, invite" has two passive participles in pa`al: the expected קרוא
qaru' "invited", and the unexpected קרוי
qaruy "named" that would be expected from a hypothetical root *Q-R-H. On the other hand, the real root *Q-R-H "happen, occur" has two different forms of the feminine singular of its active participle existing in free variation, the expected קורה
qorah and the unexpected קורית
qoret which was acquired from the final *' paradigm.