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b-hebrew - Re[2]: b-hebrew digest: December 04, 1998

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  • From: Peter_Kirk AT sil.org
  • To: furuli AT online.no, b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re[2]: b-hebrew digest: December 04, 1998
  • Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 12:20 -0500 (EST)



Dear Rolf,

You wrote: "I refer to J. Barr: "Vocalization and the Analysis of Hebrew
among the Ancient Translators" Hebraische Wortforschung. Festschrift zum
80 Geburtstag von Walter Baumgartner. VT supp XVI, 1967, 1-11. In this
article he discusses how a person's mother tongue influences her when
hearing another language which she is going to transcribe."

I fear that your own argument is sufficient to cast doubt on your reliance
on Origen, a native Greek speaker, and therefore one whose transcription of
Hebrew cannot be relied on. The same applies to the LXX translators, for
whom Hebrew was probably already their second language, also to Jerome.
Josephus could be more reliable, as probably he knew good spoken Hebrew.
Nevertheless, the influence of mother tongue is not random, and so with
great care maybe some results can be derived from Origen. The statistics
you quote do not show this great care, but of course you were abbreviating.
Is there any published work in which these matters are carefully dealt
with?

You seem to imply in your arguments that the doubling of the yod in
wayyiqtol is a phonological artifact, a Masoretic addition to get around an
apparent exception to their pronunciation rules. Is that a generally held
view? Is this also borne out by Origen's transcription? Or could this
doubling represent some morpheme that has otherwise dropped out, as Vince
seemed to suggest at one point? I am mindful of the distinction between
B:YOWM "in a day" and BAYYOWM "in the day", which superficially and
phonetically resembles that between W:YIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL. Of course in
BAYYOWM it is the article which has almost disappeared, but is represented
by patah (in place of shewa) and dagesh. Is this distinction also a
Masoretic one? Is it seen in Origen's transcription? Is it consistently
represented in LXX translation? This could be a significant test or whether
Origen's failure to distinguish WAYYIQTOL was grammatical or phonetic.

The phonetic distinction between WAYYIQTOL and W:YIQTOL may also have been
affected by the phonetic environment - as in the Masoretic text where we
have WF'EQTOL for *WA''IQTOL, but perhaps differently in the dialect which
Origen and others heard. To avoid being misled by this variable, separate
study should be made of WAYYIQTOL, WF'EQTOL, WATTIQTOL, and WANNIQTOL
forms; the latter two may be more fruitful, if the sample is large enough
e.g. in the surviving extracts from Origen, as the environment of vowel
before yod may significantly affect the pronunciation - taw and nun are
more neutral. (Maybe you have looked at all of this already, if so I'm
sorry if I seem to restate the obvious.)

Peter Kirk






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