Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan-buth <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

> how would you
>counter the claim: "In the days of Ezra it was decided that the YIQTOL
>forms with proclitic waw used in narrative texts, should have penultimate
>stress, in order to help the listener discern the meaning when the text
was
>recited." Could such a claim be harmonized with your data? If not,why?

I can't answer for Henry, and won't go into the historical development, 
just some simple synchronic stuff from EZRA times

vavhahippux is not uniformly penultimate. 
and itts normal stress is still on the end:

vayyixTOV.

Only certain weak forms show the current shift:
vayYAqom
vayYElex

but
vayyaVO' 
vayyipPOL

I conclude that 'Ezra' was NOT interested in regularizing an accentual
pattern to change/help listeners.
The "GreatSynagogue" boys just passed on what they received, broadly
speaking, 
as did the later literary Hebrew writers, Greek translators, Aramaic
translators, etc. 

Which means that the real language MORPHOLOGY  had different syntactic
categories. The writing system (the graphic system, not the morphology)
imperfectly recorded this, while remarkable in preserving glimpses of
archaic forms.

shabbat shalom
Randall Buth