Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Peter wrote:
>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)

        You are right, ofcourse.

>*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.

        But it makes sense.

Galia
>

>
>
>---
>You are currently subscribed to b-hebrew as: ghatav AT aall.ufl.edu
>To unsubscribe, forward this message to
>$subst('Email.Unsub')
>To subscribe, send an email to join-b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu.