Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Galia Hatav <ghatav AT aall.ufl.edu>]

Paul Zellmer wrote:

>Galia Hatav wrote:
>
>>         I like Peter's suggestion very much. It shows further the
>> similarity between NPs with a determiner article (H in Hebrew) and the
>> wayyiqtol.  What are the problems you see with Peter's suggestion, Paul?
>
>My hesitations hinge on the two proposed features that have hitherto been
>unnoticed in
>Hebrew studies: the allophonic "waw" morphemes, and the phonological
>reduction of the
>definite article (or let's be more general, a heh or guttural) after a
>purely supposed
>"P" (corresponding to an Arabic "F").  And then that "P" would have to
>become a waw???
>
>I have no problem with allophonic morphemes in general, but aren't these
>normally
>found in completely different locations in clauses?  I think, for example,
>of the
>Greek "kai."  When used clause initially, it is a conjuction.  When clause
>medial, it
>is adverbial, "also."  I choose this example because "kai" keeps a lot of
>the same
>meaning between it's two usages, which would be required by your two
>"waw"'s.  Yet
>there is enough distinction that I suppose "kai" could be considered a
>different
>phoneme depending on it's position in the clause.
>
>I guess I'm a bit conservative, so I'm withholding my embrace from the
>hypothesis at
>present.
>
>Paul


        I am not sure what you mean by "allophonic morphemes". Are you
referring to the phenomenon of ambiguous morphemes?  Ambiguous morphemes
are no different from 'regular' ambiguous lexicals. In any case, there
might be ambiguous morphemes which are found in exactly the same location.
For example, the free morpheme 'hot' in English is ambiguous between
'spicy' and 'not-cold'; yet it may appear in the same position of the
sentence, resulting in ambiguous sentences, such as "The soup is hot."
Similarly, the bound morpheme '-er' is ambiguous between 'more' as in
"higher" ('more high') and a marker of a professional person as in
"teacher" ('a person whose profession is to teach'). As you can see from
the examples, the morpheme appears as a suffix in its both meanings. (In
this case, however, it is not ambiguous since in one meaning it is attached
to an adjactive, and in the other case to a verb.)

Re wayyiqtol. By the expression 'allophonic waw morphme' are you referring
to my suggestion that 'w' in BH is a homonym, ambiguous between a
coordination conjunction and what Jouon calls 'waw-energetic'?   I
understand Peter suggests that what we have in the case of wayyiqtol is the
energetic waw (let me call it R-time builder - RTB waw) followed by the
definite article 'h' which drops and as a result the prefix of yiqtol gets
a dagesh geminating it, as described in (1) below:

        1. *whayiqtol ---> *wayiqtol ---> wayyiqtol

NOTE: The process illustrated in (1) as well as other processes of this
kind I see as a *synchronic* generation, in the sense of Generative Grammar
(from D-Structure to S-Structure).  It would be great if we can find
diachronic, historical and/or compartive, evidence for that.
The following, I assume, is what Peter was suggesting. The process in (1)
is the same process of the prepositions b,k,l + h:

        2. *khamalka ---> *kamalka ---> kammalka 'like the queen'
           *bhamamlaxa ---> *bamamlxa ---> bammalaxa 'in the kingdom'
           *lhamelex ---> *lamelex ---> lammelex 'to the king'

The question is why the he drops in (2), which necessitates the gemination
of the subsequent consonnat. The answer will explain also why it drops in
(1).

        Re your comment about the origin of the waw.  I did not suggest
that it was something else, and I did not understand Peter to suggest that
either. But with your question, Paul, you seem to have opened a real
exciting road. What I am going to say about this road, however, should be
taken not with a grain, but with a BAG of salt.
        We know that the stops bgd-kpt in Hebrew go through the process of
assimilation when appear after a vowel, changing into their fricative
counterparts.  Following the pronunciation of Modern Israeli Hebrew we
understand bkp to change into vxf respectively (and we only speculate about
gdt).  Jacobson and later also Halle argue that sounds change only in ONE
feature, in a pocesses such as assimilation. This works for the Hebrew /k/
which changes into [x]. However, in the case of /b/ and /p/ there is a
problem. Both stops are labial, and if they, indeed, change into [v] and
[f], they would violate the thesis that sounds change only in one
distinctive feature. They would have TWO features changing: from stops to
frictives and from bi-labials to dento-labials.  My colleague at UF Jerry
Murray suggests that the Modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation does not
reflect correctly the change in BH. (How that is possible for Modern
Israeli Hebrew to have such change I am leaving aside.) Jerry Murray
believes that the allophones of /b/ are rather [b] and the spanish
bi-labial fricative which is symbolized by the Greek letter beta.
Similarly, the phoneme /p/ has the allophones [p] and the bi-labial
fricative.
Now let's see how this can help us with the waw in wayyiqtol. If we want to
take Jouon's suggestion more strictly and say that the Arabic FA is
actually what we have in the form of wayyiqtol, we may consider it to be
/PA/, which changed in Arabic into [FA], since Arabic does not have the p
sound in its phonological system. This will face us again with the problem
that /p/ changed with respect to TWO features. It might be the case that
what happened was that /p/ changed into its bi-labial fricative
counterpart, which later changed into [f] (which could explain also the
Israeli Hebrew pronunciation).  But why did it change in BH to waw?  First,
waw is also bi-labial, just like p. Secondly, waw is a  semi-vowel. So  in
a process of assimilation, when the he drops from the form existing in the
D-structure of wayyiqtol, the p gets assimilated to the vowel. (but not to
its bi-labial fricative consonantal counterpart, since this happens only
AFTER a vowel.)   According to this hypothesis, the process illustrated in
(1) would have two previous stages, as illustrated in (3) below:

        3. *phayiqtol ---> *payiqtol ---> *wayiqtol---> wayyiqtol

However, this must be supported by phonological evidence, and therefore at
this stage I am sticking with the hypothesis that 'w' is just ambiguous (at
least synchronically speaking) between a coordination conjunction and an
RTB.

        Do all these wild thoughts make sense?

Galia

>Paul and Dee Zellmer, Jimmy Guingab, Geoffrey Beltran
>Ibanag Translation Project
>Cabagan, Philippines
>
>zellmer AT faith.edu.ph