Talk:שמועס

Etymology
From Hebrew שְׁמוּעוֹת ‎(sh'mu'ót, “news, rumors”), from שָׁמוּעַ ‎(shamúa', “heard”), past participle of שָׁמַע ‎(shamá', “to hear”).

Please provide a citation (an example from normative Hebrew literature) for such a "past participle". If it exists at all, it would appear to be exceedingly rare. Toddcs (talk) 17:56, 13 December 2016 (UTC)


 * It is generally called a "passive participle". Is that was confusing you? --WikiTiki89 19:13, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, but no. What I meant was that "shamua`" is not a verbal grammatical form actually in use. So, by analogy, e.g, are we to say that the commonly encountered noun "refu'ah" (healing) derives from some verbal passive participle "rafu'"? And the noun "pequdah" derives from some verbal participle "paqud"? But in actuality, like "shamua`" neither of those participles actually exists in any practical sense.

And even if they did, stating that the noun forms actually derive from such participles seems unfounded. "Shemu`ah" is not a noun meaning something that is heard, at least not in the sense that it actually *derives* from a passive participle meaning "heard".

And now from the other direction. Since, for example, the passive participles "shavur" (broken) and "'amur" (said) *DO* exist and are very much in use, where are their nominal forms "shevurah", a noun meaning a broken thing, and "'amurah", a noun meaning something said, that would be analogous to "shemu`ah", a rumor? No, such nouns do not exist.

All of the above leads me to believe that to say that "shemu`ah" derives from some allegedly existing passive participle "shamua`" is not correct. Rather, any resemblance between the nominal form "shemu`ah" ("refu'ah", "pequdah", etc.) and the passive participle form, even where the latter does actually exist and is in normative use, is purely coincidental.

Toddcs (talk) 02:46, 14 December 2016 (UTC)


 * You do make a good point. However, I will correct you that has a ד׳ דגושה, and so even in theory could not be derived from a passive participle **. It is, however, possible that  and  are originally from the same mishqal as, but did not undergo the consonant doubling *paquda > pəquddā because of the gutturals and instead underwent vowel lengthening *šamuʿa > šəmūʿā, making it indistinguishable from the feminine of the theoretical passive participle **šamūʿa > **šəmūʿā. I would also caution that it is not a particularly convincing argument to say that "since this other passive participle was not nominalized, passive participles cannot be nominalized"; there are in fact examples of nominalized passive participles. --WikiTiki89 23:08, 14 December 2016 (UTC)