Biblical Hebrew Forum

[decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca (Vincent DeCaen)]

in the second term i'm supposed to teach intermediate students something
about epigraphic hebrew. traditional descriptions of the putative nature
of the Jerusalem dialect 700-600 insist that diphthongs had not yet been
monophthongized. no schwas either. hmmmm.

crucial question. re: *ai to [e:]

all *ai are still [ay] and not yet [e:]. fine. but the final weak verbs
end in *ai, and are not and never have been spelled with a yod, but a heh.

must that not mean that *ai > e: had already happened before the
orthography was borrowed in the first place? "he will be" is YHYH isn't
it? and not YHYY?

it seems to me that descriptions look too much like Arabic to be a
coincidence. any thoughts....?

sholom
V -- 
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Dr Vincent DeCaen     <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>
c/o Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, 4 Bancroft Ave., 2d floor
University of Toronto, Toronto ON, CANADA, M5S 1A1

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative, www.chass.utoronto.ca/~decaen/hsei/
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Love work. Hate authority.  --Shemaiah, from Avot