Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Henry Churchyard <churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>]

>>>> From: Henry Churchyard <churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>

>>>> 2) You ignore the stress-shift in non-lamedh-he forms; the
>>>> shifted position of stress actually corresponds exactly to the
>>>> expected stress position in 2nd. millennium B.C.E consonant-final
>>>> preterite *yaqtul (as opposed to vowel-final imperfect *yaqtulu)

>>> From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>

>>> Stress may be phonemic in Hebrew but it need not be so in all
>>> instances.  Even qatals may have penultimate stress when wf is
>>> prefixed, e.g. 2 Kings 7:4 wfmftnu.

Not sure exactly what you"re referring to here; diachronically, this
form has perfectly normal penultimate stress (from *wamawatnuu or
something like that), and synchronically in biblical Hebrew it has
normal stress on a penultimate syllable before a word-final
vowel-final syllable; there are no stress shifts or special stress
developments in this word that I can see.

>>> You are correct that I ignored stress-shift in non lamed-he
>>> forms. I should have said that to add the prefix waw would
>>> increase the number of syllabels, thus affecting the position of
>>> the stress and resulting in apocopation in many instances.

I don't think so -- the stress is always determined from the end of
the word (at a diachronically earlier stage always on the penultimate
syllable, with some modifications and complications by the time of
Biblical Hebrew, as discussed in Blau's 1976 outline grammar, for
example), so it seems quite unprecedented and unparalleled for the
presence of a prefix to cause stress shift, especially when an
alternative diachronic explanation of the stress distributions is
available).


>> From: Vincent DeCaen <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>

>> btw, unless you like theoretical/generative linguistics applied to
>> phonology, and lots of statistical stuff, you might not be as
>> excited by henry's work. further, my "The Tiberian Way" is
>> motivated in part as an answer to Henry's work. so who knows. I do
>> know one thing: there is currently no appetite for advanced
>> phonological work in this little field of ours. just <sigh>
>> discourse this, and <sigh> discourse that.

Vincent -- that was actually Chapter 3 of my dissertation; chapter 4
is more 'traditional" in some ways, not statistical at all, and much,
much shorter.  I hope to have it on-line in PDF form by the end of
this week, and can discuss it at length then...  By the way, I'm not
sure you really have to defend the Tiberian Masoretes from me, as I'm
not one of those who disparage their work...  ;-)


> From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>

> In view of the fact that there is no trace of wayyiqtol before the
> Masoretes, and because no researcher has ever been able to explain
> how or why a simple conjunction can change the meaning of a verb
> form to the very opposite,

Rolf, I really wish you wouldn't use words like "invent", which can be
interpreted as polemical provocative terminology implying that the
Masoretes indulged in self-conscious fakery to cook up something
totally artificial and unnatural.  And it's not really true that
"there is no trace of wayyiqtol before the Masoretes" since most of
the component elements make perfect sense in comparative Semitic
terms; it's only the consonant gemination after wa-, and the fact that
this gemination is restricted in occurrence to forms derived from
earlier Semitic *yaqtul preterites (or whatever you want to call the
proto-form corresponding to Akkadian iqtul, Arabic pseudo-"jussives"
after _lam_, etc., if you don't like the label "preterite"), which are
slightly mysterious -- but not mysterious enough to fairly cause
suspicions of masoretic "invention"...

--
         --Henry Churchyard     churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu