לל and ננ in Hebrew root field

[Susan]

I feel like this should either be obvious or already answered here, so forgive me if I'm missing it. There are a group of Hebrew words with the letters לל or ננ in the "root" field. (I'm using HMT-W4 with instant details; they are also found with לל+ or ננ+ search.) For instance, Gen 1:11 has עשב with root לל and עץ with root ננ. I gather (particularly given the lack of נן) that these are abbreviations of some sort, presumably indicating an unknown or otherwise problematic root, but I can't figure out what they might stand for.  Any hints would be appreciated.

 

A separate but related mystery: all forms of אכל show up when I search for לל+, although the root I see is, appropriately, אכל. (It's actually not all forms -- just the verb + segholate noun. Those with additional consonants in the lexical form such as  אכלה and מאכל are not found, oddly enough.)

[Ken Simpson]

Hi Susan,

 

Ok, the first part is fairly simple

 

ננ indicates an unknown root

 

לל indicates a loan word (hence in Hebrew terms also rootless)

 

You will find the appropriate help entry in the help files at: Biblical Research and Analyses > Work with Grammatically Tagged Text > Search for Words in Tagged Text

 

As to why אכל appears, that’s a very interesting question, and someone a bit cleverer than me might need to answer that.

 

It seems that the roots that are treated as לל but don’t have לל as a root in their ID, are אכל, ארד, רפד

Edited July 8, 2016 by Ken Simpson

[Susan]

Thanks, Ken. Just out of curiosity, do לל and ננ stand for something in Hebrew, or those were just made up as place fillers? I guess it makes sense to have something there with Hebrew letters so that it's searchable from the normal Hebrew search box.

 

It seems to me that it's not the root that is treated as לל, at least for אכל, but only certain lexemes. Although אכל+ finds all of them, לל+ only finds those spelled without additional consonants (i.e. verb + אֹכֶל). The nouns מאכל  and אכלה are not found.  Odd.

 

Thanks for pointing out the other two that behave this way. They aren't roots I know. ארד appears to be a proper name; no idea whether that's a "proper" Hebrew root.

[Ken Simpson]

OK - I am not privy to the thoughts in dusty corridors of antiquity (the nineties I guess) as to the reasons for לל and ננ

 

I have always just constructed them in my head as לoan לexeme and נot (k)נown, but I would be completely astonished if that was actually the case.

 

One has to say that both ארד and רפד are not common in the HB, but the ID do seem inconsistent with the search result

[Helen Brown]

Ken, your guess is spot on, as to the origin of לל and ננ

 

"It seems that the roots that are treated as לל but don’t have לל as a root in their ID, are אכל, ארד, רפד"

 

I can only reproduce this with אכל and this is definitely a bug. With the latest HMT-W4 and Accordance 11.2.2 the other words are not found with the root search for לל.

 

We are always ready to correct any errors noted in the roots and the glosses, these are our own databases.

[Helen Brown]

Well, it took an intensive hunt, but our doughtly bug catchers have found and eliminated these weird results...for the next rev.

[Ken Simpson]

Fantastic!!!! Still very astonished that I guessed how you came up with לל and ננ!!!

 

   

Edited July 13, 2016 by Ken Simpson