Componential Analysis of the Lexeme דֶברֶ (‘plague’) in Ancient Hebrew

Abstract

The research is part of the compositional analysis started some time ago in the Florentine University. It is based on the application of Coseriu's theories on functional languages within Hebrew lexicographic research. In the corpus of ancient Hebrew (consisting of the inscriptions, the MT and the Qumranic epigraphic material) various functional languages characterized by chronological, dialect, sociological, and stylistic homogeneity have been identified. The research, in the first phase, comments on the occurrences of the דֶברֶ lexeme within the various functional languages in order to offer grammatical and semantic information on the lexeme itself. Subsequently, in the results, he proposes the inclusion in the overall search of the 'dimension' identified for the דֶברֶ lexeme. The reconstruction of the meanings of דֶברֶ will be given by the identification of the distinctive features, meaning by meaning the result of the complementary interaction of semantic features.