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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] CV syllables, was music in Hebrew

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] CV syllables, was music in Hebrew
  • Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2006 12:21:05 +0000

On 08/02/2006 03:09, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
On 2/7/06, Peter Kirk wrote:
On 06/02/2006 19:31, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
I think you misunderstand me. I am referring to the possibility
that a pre-exilic -h was a consonantal -h (just like feminine
possessive is still consonantal -- mappiq) and may have even
had a following vowel as well. I am not referring at all to -h
representing a long "a" vowel at the end of the word that
changed to -w with the "Canaanite a -> o shift."

This is a possibility. But you have no way of knowing whether a
pre-exilic -h was pronounced -ha, or (clearly pronounced) -h, or -o, as
both endings can be written exactly the same in unpointed texts. So you
have no evidence of a change from -ha to -o.

The standard reconstruction of this particular development is: *-ahu > *-au
- *o^. Now, both Davila (blog post in Karl's response and his Orthography
article that he quotes there) and Sarfatti, "Hebrew Inscriptions" (Maarav 3/1,
1982 -- a source Davila references in his Orthography article and which is
my source for the above reconstruction) assume this change to have
occurred by the "Biblical period." But I am not sure what is the basis
for assuming the development had proceeded through the *-au and
*-o^ stages in pre-exilic times, as opposed to *-ahu being the pre-exilic
pronunciation while *-au and *-o^ are the post-exilic ones. This is not
something that cannot be proven -- all we need is an example of -h
representing -o^ in pre-exilic times for which there is no explanation or
reconstruction as having a consonantal value. I am not sure there is
such an example.

Well, how about Shlomo(h) and Shilo(h)? They may not be attested in pre-exilic inscriptions, but surely no one would reconstruct them with consonantal value.

I accept that the time of this change is uncertain. But, because -h can represent either long -o or -ahu, these spellings are not evidence either way.
I don't think you actually know what you are talking about here. I am
not an expert, but this is the situation as I understand it here in the
UK. Chaucer is published and read both in its original middle English
and in translation into modern English, because the middle English is
too difficult for many readers. But Shakespeare is almost never
translated into modern English, but is printed and performed more or
less as written. Words in Shakespeare are never substituted, and in
general archaic spellings are not updated.

Compare:
http://ise.uvic.ca/Texts/Rom_M/Scene/1.1 (Modern) or use your own text.
http://ise.uvic.ca/Texts/Rom_Q2/Scene/1.1 (1599) which says it is peer-
reviewed, but seems to have been scanned and still have sections that
have not been corrected after the scan.

This was simply an observation based on the above.

This "modern" version is not properly modernised, for it still uses "thou" and obsolete expressions like "marry". So it is not in fully modern English at all. It is simply Shakespeare's text with modernised spelling.
But modern editions do
distinguish "u" and "v", and "i" and "j", although these pairs of
letters were not distinguished in the first printed folios of
Shakespeare. In other words, modern editions of Shakespeare (and
similarly of the contemporary King James Bible) use different spelling
conventions from the original. But they cannot be considered as
translations into a different form of English.

Why not? What makes something into a translation rather than a mere
"updating"? If you replace "Early Modern English" words in a given
document with "Late Modern English" words why is that not translating
even if you maintain to use in the replacement only the later evolved form
of the "Early Modern English" word?

If I replace "thou" forms with "you" forms, that is arguably translating into fully modern English. If I simply change the orthography e.g. "liue" to "live", "necke" to "neck" and "Iuliet" to "Juliet", that is does not make it fully modern English. A text like your http://ise.uvic.ca/Texts/Rom_M/Scene/1.1 which has made only such changes is not in fully modern English.

Also, in Shakespeare as perhaps the KJB, there are different
considerations of maintaining the original text or poetry which I am not
sure were present for Persian period Judaean scribes who were using
pre-exilic period documents.

In this connection, the following article may be informative:
http://www.penguinclassics.co.uk/nf/shared/WebDisplay/0,,62049_1_10,00.html

This is an interesting article by a well-known linguist. But it clearly makes the point that no one actually modernises Shakespeare in the sense of replacing obscure words and obsolete grammar, although some people have called for it to be done. But what they actually do is to update the spelling, as in the example you found.

Surely, Yitzhak, you recognise that by updating such spelling
conventions in Shakespeare it is not being translated into fully modern
English, and by updating the Torah to match modern Hebrew spelling
conventions it would not thereby be translated into modern Hebrew. Even
if you write a WAYYIQTOL form with a full complement of matres
lectionis, it doesn't thereby become a modern Hebrew verb form.

But it may no longer be the Biblical verb form, if you give me different
vocalization than the original was meant to have -- you may be giving me
a literary construct that never had existence in spoken language except
for liturgical purposes. So you can't claim that it is still the same or
probably the same. You may still claim that it might be the same, but
with differences in spelling, this might be an improbable position.

Yes, just as early modern English texts with late modern spellings are a literary construct, and may indicate pronunciations which were never used in Shakespeare's time. But, whatever the spelling, this slightly adapted Shakespeare is still a 16th century work and not a 21st century one.
But you can't argue that the original pronunciation was in fact different
just because the old spelling would have allowed it to be different. Yet it
seems to me that by your method of reasoning the change of spelling
implies that "Iuliet" must in fact have been pronounced "eye-oo-li-et".

It is a fact that the pronunciation was different:
http://www.bartleby.com/224/1502.html

Thank you for this link. But the pronunciation changes listed here do not include word initial "y" sound to "j" sound, a change which happened long before the time of Shakespeare. In fact it didn't happen in English at all, but in French, for nearly all of our words starting in "j" are borrowed from or via French and were already pronounced with the English (not French - the softening of French "j" to "zh" is a later phenomenon) "j" sound when they were borrowed. So Shakespeare's heroine's name was never "yoo-li-et", certainly never "eye-oo-li-et" or "ee-oo-li-et", but always, ever since it the name was borrowed into English "joo-li-et". Note also the Italian spelling Giulietta, pronounced "joo-li-etta".
And I think the spelling partly reflects that. Also, following the above
article on Shakespeare and Sarfatti, there are examples of slight changes
in meanings in various words. Two examples from Sarfatti - "(wd" is an
adverb in the Bible but a noun (remainder) in the pre-exilic inscriptions.
")dm" is in some cases the indefinite pronoun "someone, anybody" -
"()rwr h)dm )$r yptx )t z)t" while in the Bible only ")y$" serves this
purpose. This suggest that even if the Bible is in part pre-exilic
in origin (a statement with which I agree), perhaps a certain level of
modernization of the lexicon also took place.

I don't deny this possibility. I simply consider that the evidence for it is rather weak. Your points above can easily be explained as dialect and register differences within the pre-exilic language.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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