Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

To Henry and any others who were frustrated by my blundering, I apologize 
for the confusion with my transliteration.  I have noted the corrections
below (the lines without any mark >)

Rob

----------
>From: Henry Churchyard <churchh AT usa.net>
>To: rdholmst AT students.wisc.edu
>Subject: Re: constructs and vowel length
>Date: Tue, Oct 26, 1999, 11:36 AM
>

> I had a hard time trying to figure out which words you meant;
> it might be better to use a transliteration scheme that doesn't
> involve special characters that don't translate...
>
> --
> Henry Churchyard   churchh AT usa.net   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/
>
>> Subject: Re: constructs and vowel length
>> From: "Robert Holmstedt" <rdholmst AT students.wisc.edu>
>> Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 17:24:27 -0500
>> X-Message-Number: 7
>
>> 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 i= s 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. *ha=B9=B9em > ha:=B9em or *minh.odesh >
>> *mih.h.odesh > meh.odesh.

*ha??em > ha:?em 'the mother'



>> 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/ seem= s to act differently in the present of the
>> bilabial /m/ (if Jo=FCon-Muraoka is correct, =A788Bg), e.g. kaf,
>> par, har, but =8C=E5m, y=E5m.

(Jouon-Muraoka par. 88Bg)... but `a:m 'people' and ya:m 'sea' (both with
qamets, presumably the Masoretic low central vowel which represents the
historical short /a/ and sometimes the historical short /u/)

>
>> Thanks for the interesting discussion, Rob
>
>> --
>> Robert D. Holmstedt
>> Hebrew & Semitic Studies
>> University of Wisconsin-Madison
>
>
>
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