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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: Thu, 09 Feb 2006 00:47:38 +0000

On 08/02/2006 19:11, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
On 2/8/06, Peter Kirk wrote:

Hello Peter,

In a comment to a message to Karl, you wrote:

But it can be answered by pointing out that in all periods of
Hebrew from early inscriptional right up to modern there is
inconsistency in spelling, especially of long I and O vowels,
between full spellings with matres lectionis and "defective"
spellings with no letter (rather than point) marking the vowel.
We know that in Masoretic and modern Hebrew the difference
between full and defective spelling does not imply a
pronunciation difference.

First, if I write in Modern Hebrew qtl, qwtl, and qtwl, the
use of the mater lectionis is going to make a difference as
to how I interpret the word: past tense, present tense, or
imperative. So the last sentence above is simply not true
all the time. In fact, the entire paragraph above can be
characterized as such. Yes, not all spelling differences
and inconsistency is necessarily a product of pronunciation
difference. But the fact that not all are such doesn't answer
the possibility that some are.

You misunderstand me. I was not referring to cases like qtl, qwtl and qtwl, which in modern Hebrew are clearly different words (different forms of the same verb) with different pronunciations. I was referring to cases, which I know do occur in modern Hebrew as well as in biblical and probably inscriptional, where the same word with the same meaning is spelled in different ways e.g. by different authors - but without implying a different pronunciation. Similarly "liue" and "live" in a Shakespeare text (from the two versions of Romeo and Juliet you linked to), and "colour" and "color" in modern English, are pronounced the same despite the variant spelling conventions. Well, you seem to agree by saying that "not all spelling differences and inconsistency is necessarily a product of pronunciation difference". But that implies that spelling differences and inconsistency is not evidence of pronunciation difference: there is indeed a possibility of a pronunciation difference (but then there is that even if the spelling is unchanged) but also a very good chance that the pronunciation was unchanged.


Now, this particular thread of discussion with you began, when
you responded to my statement that "No one agrees that
'Biblical Hebrew' was spoken before the Babylonian Exile."
Later, I corrected my phrasing to say "Not everyone agrees."
It is important to remember that this paragraph was a response
to Karl's paragraph that ran as follows:

What I have asked for is evidence from when everyone
can agree that Biblical Hebrew was spoken as a native
tongue, namely from before the Babylonian Exile. All I
have been given is theory, which I question, and data
from much later periods.

When we consider what sounds the language of the
consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible represents, we cannot
(directly) use pre-exilic materials, and conversely, we cannot
use (directly) elements in the language of the Hebrew Bible
to make conclusions about pre-exilic sounds. First, it is not
something "everyone can agree about." Far from it. But I
think that even you'd agree that even those who "agree" with
it, will be making a methodological error in so doing. The
only use we can make is in offering a reasonable
reconstruction that explains both, relates the pre-exilic
inscriptions to their position in the development from
Semitic, and similarly relates the Biblical Hebrew words
or spelling to their position in the development from
Semitic, possibly as a later stage than the pre-exilic
inscriptions. ...

I don't entirely follow you here. But I suppose my point is that it is possible to make the "reasonable reconstruction" you mention without hypothesising any changes of pronunciation between inscriptional Hebrew and the language of the Torah, only a change in spelling conventions. Now very likely there was at least some difference between how the writers of the inscriptions pronounced their texts and how the writers of the Torah pronounced theirs (whether differences in time or only of dialect). But as the spelling differences can be explained apart from pronunciation differences, we are left with no convincing evidence concerning any supposed pronunciation differences.

... Karl wanted to do something else -- to use
hypothetical 'evidence' from pre-exilic times for the sounds
of the language in order to directly interpret Biblical Hebrew
passages in their consonantal form as preserved in the
Massoretic Text. He also wanted to deny something else
-- the use of post-exilic evidence of language sounds to
understand the consonantal form as preserved in the
Massoretic Text. While the latter is probably more
acceptable, the first -- even if such hypothetical evidence
existed -- is not proper methodology.

I do not want to support Karl's arguments. You have seen my responses to him.
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.

But you don't know how they were spelled in pre-exilic times.
So how can it be proof that -h in pre-exilic times was used for
-o^ ? This is a good example of how spelling in the Hebrew
Bible cannot teach us about pre-exilic conventions.

No, I can't be sure. But, although we have little evidence of how pronunciation changed, if at all, we do have reasonable evidence of how spelling changed. This would make it extremely unlikely that Shlomo and Shilo were spelled with final vav, or with no final letter, before the exile. Well, perhaps there is a little circular reasoning there. But are there examples of word final vav for any vowel in inscriptional Hebrew? If not, we have to assume either that there are no words ending in -o in inscriptional Hebrew, which is rather unlikely given how common they are in later Hebrew, or else that they were spelled with final he.
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 know how well we know that -h can represent -o^, and
whether it is not based on the assumption that -h in pre-exilic
inscriptions was pronounced -o^ rather than as a consonant.
Sarfatti specifically mentions that -h came to represent -o^
because the above change (-ahu > -au > -o^) was not reflected
in the orthography.

This seems improbable to me unless some explanation can be given for how -h came to represent -a and -e. The simplest hypothesis is that -h was first written as a mater lectionis for any final vowel, or at least for -a, -e and -o. The suggestion that its use for -o came about by a quite different mechanism from its use for -a and -e is improbable by Occam's Razor.
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.

Well, maybe it is translation but instead of into Modern English
-- into a literary construct?

I would not call a change in spelling conventions a translation at all, for there is no change in the spoken form.
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.

At one point he does argue the case for translating certain hard
words, sparingly, saying he sees no harm with it:

"I conclude that the case for modernization is supported by only
about 5% of Shakespeare's vocabulary." and "If pushed, I am
prepared to take one small step in Susan Bassnett's direction. I
see no harm in translating those cases where a really difficult word
becomes the focus of dramatic attention, and where there would
be no poetic loss. 'No, not a grise', says Cesario (aka Viola) to
Olivia, talking about pity being akin to love (TN 3.1.121). Turning
grise into 'step, whit, bit', or some such word is something that
directors often do anyway, without anyone (bar a few scholars)
noticing."

OK, he agrees that to translate Shakespeare into modern English would not be a very bad thing. But this remains a witness to my point that it is not standard practice. Even what you presented me as a translation into modern English is in fact just an update of spelling.
And we are not talking about consistent widespread modernization
of the language. For the issue under discussion, it's sufficient that
only in some obscure words did modernization take place in the
Bible.

This is possible. But maybe you are confused about what the issue is. Substitution of a few obscure words is a quite independent process from large scale change in pronunciation.
...

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.

It's a 16th century work in some respects, and a 21st century
one in other respects. As a reader, without the original, you
don't know which parts are which. You can't study the 16th
century language -- definitely not for the purpose of determining
vocalization -- from the literary construct creation. Again, it
is important to remember the context of my original remarks
was essentially Karl's paragraph above.

I agree that the version with the original spelling would be the more helpful for studying 16th century English. But even if we had only the orthographically modernised version to work with, as with the Torah, we could learn a lot about 16th century English and how it differed from modern English, especially in grammar and lexicon although not so clearly in pronunciation.
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.

You can't compare the possessive pronoun -- which is
known to be in Semitic and was not borrowed into Hebrew from
a different language. We know the authors of the pre-exilic
inscriptions didn't borrow the -h suffix from some other language
where it was pronounced "h" and yet in Hebrew the suffix was
pronounced "w" or vice versa. This whole example just doesn't
make sense and doesn't correspond to the case we have here.

My point about the loan words was not that they are a parallel with the Hebrew but to correct your error that Shakespeare would have pronounced "Iuliet" with an initial I or Y sound, rather than J.
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.

I think this further weakens your case. You are saying, in effect,
yes, the pre-exilic inscriptions, while few, do suggest that a
different "dialect" than the one preserved in the Hebrew Bible,
and yes, this "dialect" could develop later into the language
represented by the consonantal text, but we should still
consider the possibility that there were two dialects already
in pre-exilic times, one attested in the inscriptions, and one
not attested but essentially the same as what is represented
in the Hebrew Bible. Well, yes, it's a possibility, but it sounds
very improbable.

That's not what I was saying. What I was suggesting was that pre-exilic Hebrew, like almost any language, was not monolithic in its lexicon or orthography, and so one would expect some variation between different sources and different registers of language without interpreting this variation as necessary evidence that they were composed at different times.

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





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