Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Robert Holmstedt" <rdholmst AT students.wisc.edu>]

Jean:

I am curious about your methodology.   What type of linguistic model are
your bringing to bear on the Hebrew data?

> Hi,
>
>
> Henry Churchyard - I agree that the long vowels in qo.sht. and ne.rd are
> due to tonic lengthening, as there doesn't appear to be any other
> mechanism that could lengthen them.  However, the /e/ and /o/ type
> geminate monosyllables like _h.e.s._ and _h.o.q_ aren't
> sensitive to main stress at all.  They have long vowels in construct OR
> with maqqef (again, sometimes short due to other factors),

This is not necessarily correct--h.o.q usually has a qamets-hatuf when it is
an proclitic form and holem when it is a free form--that is, unless you are
not making a distinction between holem and qamets-hatuf.  However, you are
right with h.es.--even when it is a proclitic form, it has the tsere.


> like _?et_ which have short vowels with maqqef, long otherwise, or
> non-geminate constructs which follow the syntax.  Since the presence or
> absence of main stress ('abstract' or otherwise) doesn't seem to have any
> effect on vowel length with geminate monosyl's, it seems reasonable to
> look for another explanation.  As this language is positively rife with
> compensatory lengthening, why not that? instead of introducing massive
> complications into the already overly-complex problem of tonic
> lengthening.

With compensatory lengthening, the conditioning factor is the loss of an
adjacent segment, e.g. *ha¹¹em > ha:¹em or *minh.odesh > *mih.h.odesh >
meh.odesh.
However, with the geminate monosyllabic nouns, the loss of one of the
seqments is usually attributed to the apocopation of the word-final segment,
i.e. the one which is not adjacent to the preceding vowel.  This accounts
for the presence of the double segment when it is not word-final (e.g. with
the plural suffix or possessive suffixes), e.g. h.uqqi:m.  If you analyze
the singular absolute forms as compensatory lengthening, you are implying
that it is the FIRST and not last of the double segments which is lost,
resulting in the lengthening of the adjacent vowel.  Do you really want to
do this?


> In any case, even if we agree to disagree on the precise mechanism of
> vowel lengthening in these forms, I still have to come up with a reason
> why the vowels of [a] type forms pattern so differently.
>
> I get the feeling this is a nastier problem than I first thought.

I concur that it is a challenging issue.  Not only will you have to take
into account that /a/ often acts differently than /u/ and /i/ in stressed
environments, but you will also have to account for that fact that /a/ seems
to act differently in the present of the bilabial /m/ (if Joüon-Muraoka is
correct, §88Bg), e.g. kaf, par, har, but Œåm, yåm.


Thanks for the interesting discussion,
Rob

--
Robert D. Holmstedt
Hebrew & Semitic Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison