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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Vocalization and reading of Biblical Hebrew

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  • From: Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>
  • To: david.l.steinberg AT rogers.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Vocalization and reading of Biblical Hebrew
  • Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:31:14 -0500 (EST)

David,

On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:14:30 -0500, David Steinberg
<david.l.steinberg AT rogers.com> wrote:
>
> Will
> Thanks for your comment. I do not know how many homographs, assumed
> to stand for phonologically distinct words, exist in Egyptian.

It's probably comparable to Hebrew, considering only the consonantal
text.

> Since
> vocalized Coptic is very late Egyptologists may have no choice in how
> they handle the language.

As I stated.

> However, in Hebrew we have multiple streams
> of evidence (vowel letters; Amarna Canaaanite; Greek transcriptions;
> Palestinian, Babylonian, and Tiberian pointing; modern pronunciation
> traditions; closely cognate languages - Aramaic/Syriac, Arabic etc)
> which often enable us to convincingly reconstruct a chain of
> pronunciation developments from Proto-Semitic through Biblical Hebrew
> to Tiberian Hebrew. It is therefore gratuitous to ignore all this
> evidence and pretend that we have no idea of the original BH
> vocalization(s).

I don't deny this - my point was it's possible to read and pronounce Hebrew
without assuming a particular vocalization. I'm not arguing that it's
desirable to do so, but note that choosing to do this doesn't necessarily mean
that one is denying (e.g.) that there was a phonological distinction between
qal and pi``el forms, only that one doesn't trust the manuscript tradition
enough to reflect that distinction.

--
Will Parsons




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