[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo-2016-legnaioli-time-ancient-hebrew-lexicon-case/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [docs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/) / [papers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/) / [Ancient Hebrew](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo/) / Time in Ancient Hebrew Lexicon: The Case of yrḥ and ḥdš # Time in Ancient Hebrew Lexicon: The Case of yrḥ and ḥdš **Authors:** Alberto Legnaioli · **Year:** 2016 · **Venue:** Quaderni di Linguistica e Studi Orientali 2, 235–263 **Link:** [doi.org/10.13128/QULSO-2421-7220-18755](https://doi.org/10.13128/QULSO-2421-7220-18755) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) [**0** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2519815659) openalex · 2026-10-18[Quaderni di Linguistica e Studi Orientali](https://openalex.org/S4390648380)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) - [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.13128/qulso-2421-7220-18755) - [PDF](https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-qulso/article/download/1880/1880) - [DOI 10.13128/qulso-2421-7220-18755](https://doi.org/10.13128/qulso-2421-7220-18755) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2519815659) **Authors (1)** 1. [Alberto Legnaioli](https://openalex.org/A5004298138) h 0 · 0 citations · 12 works Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about A structural-semantic study (Coseriu's lexematics, as applied to Hebrew by Zatelli and Vivian) of two words for "month": חֹדֶשׁ and יֶרַח. The Bible is split into "functional languages" (archaic poetry, early narrative, early poetry, juridical-cultic, late narrative, Job, etc.), and each word is analysed in five steps: distribution, class (what kind of word it combines with), syntagms, components (semes) and paradigm. חֹדֶשׁ occurs 291 times, יֶרַח 21 (about 14:1), both mostly in narrative dating formulas. Three lexical units come out: ḥdš¹ "month" (a time unit), ḥdš² "(day of) New Moon" (a feast, in the company of שַׁבָּת, חַג, מוֹעֵד), and yrḥ "month", an interchangeable variant of ḥdš¹ that fades from early to late prose but reappears in Job. Whether yrḥ is an archaism cannot be proved from so few data. The method's point: define a word against its neighbours in the field, not in isolation as the big lexicons do. ## Ideas - I1. Split the Torah dictionary entry for חֹדֶשׁ into two senses by collocation: with an ordinal or number, or as "in the Nth month", → "month"; coordinated with שַׁבָּת/מוֹעֵד/חַג or in "head of your months" (רָאשֵׁי חָדְשֵׁיכֶם) → "new moon". Measure against the JPS rendering of each Torah occurrence. - I2. Build a small time field for the dictionary: יוֹם, חֹדֶשׁ, יֶרַח, שָׁנָה, בֹּקֶר, עֶרֶב, עוֹלָם, with dimension tags (objective unit vs cultic vs subjective/"remote time") as features, so that date expressions can be parsed into the world. - I3. Count each time word per genre in the Torah (narrative vs law vs poetry, from `prag`'s voice and the poetry passages) to reproduce the distribution table on our data. ## For Mova I1 and I2 go into the Torah dictionary (`macula dict`) and [The lexicon](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/10-lexicon/) (semantic fields, polysemy). I2 also feeds the world's time model: dating formulas ("in the second month, on the seventeenth day") become events with dates. I3 is a count for `10-lexicon.md`. ## Cite The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.13128/qulso-2421-7220-18755](https://doi.org/10.13128/qulso-2421-7220-18755) ``` @inproceedings{legnaioli2016time, title = {{Time in Ancient Hebrew Lexicon: The Case of yrḥ and ḥdš}}, author = {Legnaioli, Alberto}, booktitle = {Quaderni di Linguistica e Studi Orientali}, year = {2016}, doi = {10.13128/qulso-2421-7220-18755}, url = {https://doi.org/10.13128/qulso-2421-7220-18755} } ``` - [← previous Participant-Reference Shifts in Zech. 1:1-6. An Assessment of Diachronic and Synchronic Approaches](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo-2016-jensen-participant-reference-shifts-zech-1/) - [next → Is the adjective distinct from the noun as a grammatical category in biblical Hebrew?](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo-2016-miller-naude-adjective-distinct-noun-grammatical-category/) - [↑ back to Ancient Hebrew](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo/) ## References 28 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Andersen, Francis I., and David Noel Freedman. 1980. Hosea. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Garden City: Doubleday. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Andersen%2C+Francis+I%2E%2C+and+David+Noel+Freedman%2E+1980%2E+Hosea%2E+A+New+Translation+with+Introduction+and+Commentary%2E+Garden+City%3A+Doubleday%2E) 2. Andersen, Francis I., and David Noel Freedman. 1989. Amos. New York: Doubleday. 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