Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Galia wrote:

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

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. 

<long snip>

According to this hypothesis, the process illustrated in (1) would 
have two previous stages, as illustrated in (3) below:

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

Peter's reply:

The explanation after 2. cannot be quite right, as the consonant is 
geminated also without the preposition: hammelek

I would prefer to explain the gemination as replacing an original 
consonant. Thus perhaps the Hebrew article was originally hal- (cf 
Arabic al-). Thus the process is e.g.

*hal-melek -> hammelek
*l-hal-melek -> *l-hammelek -> lammelek BUT
*w-hal-melek -> *w-hammelek -> wehammelek (h not elided)

*w-hal-yiqtol -> *w-hayyiqtol -> wayyiqtol OR
*p-hal-yiqtol -> *p-hayyiqtol -> *phayyiqtol ->wayyiqtol

i.e. h is elided after p as after b,k,l, but perhaps we are left with 
an aspirated p (written as ph, the h should be superscripted) which 
later shifted to w, in distinction to other p's which remained p or 
shifted to f. That's a slightly different phonetic explanation to 
Galia's but on the same sort of lines. (I don't buy the suggestion 
that p -> f counts as a double shift as it occurs in many languages, 
presumably because a labio-dental plosive is impossible if you have 
gapped teeth and bilabial fricatives are rare and hard to pronounce).

I don't know if any of this is provable, but it is more what I was 
thinking concerning the article.

Peter Kirk