Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Vincent DeCaen <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>]

> From: alfred.silberman AT lmco.com (Al Silberman)
> Subject: Re: qametz hatuf
> To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>

I guess this means I'm getting through. :-)

> On Tue, 25 Aug 1998  Vincent DeCaen <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
> >qametz qatan is an innovation, indeed a fiction. I refer you to
> >sources with bibliography to follow this up:
> [snip]
> >open syllable was not "long". period.  quite a bit different from
> >later traditions. makes for an interesting phonology of Tiberian
> >Hebrew as well.
 
> I have written about this before and I will say it again:

where? in print? sources?

> All of the above statements including all of the statements in the
> referenced bibliographies are pure FICTION. They all ignore most of

oh, come now. are you going to refute the scholarship based on the
masoretic schools' treatises themselves? on the testimony of
contemporaries 1000-1200? I don't see how you could refute this
argumentation and evidence.

> Judaism's pronunciation traditions. My pronunciation (Eastern European
> Ashkenazi) makes a very great distinction between the two. So do many
> others. The only one that I know of that makes no distinction at all
> between the two is Western European Ashkenazi. I have not seen anyone
> seriously address the various pronunciation traditions in Judaism and THEN
> come up with a theory.

your reading is based on a five-point system. the Tiberian is
seven-point. you therefore get these systematic mismatch problems. the
hallmark of the Tiberian tradition was that it accurately kept qametz
and seghol pure and distinct. see Chiesa's extensive documentation.

it is quite clear that there is adstratum interference in Europe. I
can give you good references for books on historical linguistics and
sociolinguistics. 

1964. Gene M. Schramm, The Graphemes of Tiberian Hebrew, does a very
good job of such comparative dialectics. section 5. that's respectable
work and by a respected scholar.

but the point is that no living dialects and reading traditions are in
a direct line of descent from the *Tiberian*. the reason why the
Tiberian tradition was valued was because contemporaries recognized
its conservative and accurate preservation of the liturgical reading,
over against spoken dialects that *are* the ancestors of current
reading practices. everyone attests to the consistent and accurate
reading of qametz as open o in the Tiberian tradition.  dem others
don't speak proper-like 'Ebrew, mate.
 
> I have tried to understand some of these theories but they all seem like
> academic "ivory tower" pronunciations without having a lifetime of
> experience immersed in it. I no longer pay any attention to them.

that's sad. are you saying you're turning your back on scholarship
because your reading tradition is not identical to the original? that
the idea of an original is mistaken, if it's not identical to current
readings? 

I'm sorry you take such a dim view of scholarship. Kahn's work is
**impeccable**. it is not possible to do better. if you could refute
such work, then I'd be interested: indeed, I would welcome such an
attempt.  go for it.

cheers.
V
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Vincent DeCaen, Ph.D.                                
<decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>
Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~decaen/hsei/intro.html
c/o Deparment of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
4 Bancroft Ave., 2d floor,  University of Toronto,  Toronto ON,  M5S 1A1

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