Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Henry Churchyard" <churchh AT crossmyt.com>]

> Subject: Tiberian Final Shwa
> From: "S. L." <lyosovs AT cityline.ru>
> Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 21:03:18 +0400

> What do you think about Tiberian Hebrew punctuation of the cluster
> Auslaut with a final shwa, like wayyaZq ('and he gave to drink'), or
> `att ('thou' f.), quZT ('truth'), or ka:tabt and many more? And why
> did they vocalise wayyaZq etc. with a final shwa, but
> morphonologically identical wayye:T <*wayye:nT ('and he bent')
> without shwa and without dagesh? (I assume they could not fail to
> notice that wayye:T <*wayye:nT).  In what way `att is different from
> wayye:T?  It is true I do not know an example of a final geminated
> (having a dagesh in it) consonant + shwa that in not a bgdpkt but
> what does it have to do with this graphics?  Additional concern: we
> were taught that for the original Naqdanim the shwa sign meant just
> a zero vowel. Why then put it under the last letter of wayyaZq etc.?
> Each time I teach first-year students I try to find a way to expose
> these things in a philologically exhaustive yet non-contradictory
> way, but it seems I am failing again.  Sergey Lyosov


Not sure about your transcription practices (have never seen "Z" to
transcribe a sh sound, or "u" to transcribe a _h.olem_ before), and am
not entirely sure I understand all your terminology, but here are some
of the conclusions that I've arrived at:

First of all, you have to remember that in the Tiberian orthography, a
consonant which does not have any vowel diacritic or _sh@wa_ diacritic
associated with it is interpreted as being either a _mater lectionis_
or a silent consonant.  Of course, it's most frequently the letters
_'aleph_, _he_, _waw_, and _yod_ which have no diacritic associated
with them, but this principle applies to all the other consonants too --
so a letter _shin_ in the name "Issachar" which does not have a
diacritic associated with it will be interpreted as not representing a
real consonant sound according to exactly the same rule which applies
to an ordinary garden-variety _yod_ in a masculine plural ending.
Therefore, the real function of the Tiberian "sh@wa" diacritic is not
to indicate either the absence or the presence of a vowel sound;
rather, the function of "sh@wa" within the orthographic system is to
act as a "place-holder" diacritic, which serves to indicate that a
consonant letter does transcribe a real consonant sound (if the
consonant is not followed by a full vowel or _h.at.eph_ vowel).

Of course, this "need a diacritic to indicate that consonant letter is
pronounced as consonant sound" rule is usually suspended in the case
of word-final consonant letters (the fact that a word-final consonant
letter does not have an associated diacritic doesn't necessarily mean
it is silent or a _mater lectionis_).  However, this word-final
exception has exceptions of its own in some cases.  One of these is
where a word ends in two consonants, neither of which is followed by a
full vowel or a _h.at.eph_ vowel.  In this case, if the word-final
post-consonantal consonant were left without a diacritic, then it
would be liable to be interpreted as silent in exactly the same way as
the final _'aleph_ of the word _h.et._ "sin" is interpreted as silent
(in this form, orthographically _h.eth-s.ere-t.eth-sh@wa-'aleph_, the
letter _t.eth_ has a _sh@wa_ because it is pronounced and is not
word-final in the spelling, while the _'aleph_ lacks a diacritic in
order to indicate that it's silent).  Another exception to the
word-final exception is _kaph_ (probably to reinforce the distinction
between forms with the 2nd.sg. -ka masculine suffix, where the final
-a vowel is not written with any mater lectionis, vs. 2nd.sg. feminine
forms ending in word-final -k; if word-final _kaph_ not followed by a
vowel didn't take such orthographic _sh@wa_, then scribal correctors
might have wasted time pondering over whether forms ending in
final-diacriticless _kaph_ were specifically intended to be feminine
forms, or were actually masculine forms with the _qames._ diacritic
accidentally omitted).  And lastly, words ending in post-vocalic
_taw-dagesh_ and _daleth-dagesh_ also take a _sh@wa_ diacritic (not
sure whether this is similar to the final _kaph_ situation, in
reinforcing the orthographic distinction between 2nd.sg.masc. and
2nd.sg.fem. forms, for the more common case of post-vocalic
_taw-dagesh_, or whether such post-vocalic final consonants with
_dagesh_ were considered similar to a double consonant -- not that
knowing which of these explanations applies would make any real
difference to the phonological interpretation of the orthography).

Once the real main function of _sh@wa_ is understood (i.e. to indicate
that a consonant letter is pronounced as a consonant sound, and so is
not either silent or a _mater lectionis_), and also the environments
where _sh@wa_ can occur are known (i.e. not usually under word-final
consonants, with the three exceptions discussed above), then the
question of when _sh@wa_ actually represented a vowel sound can be
discussed.  When I examined the evidence in my dissertation (taking
William Chomsky's classic article "The Pronunciation of the _Shewa_" in
Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 62, 1971, pp. 88-94 as my starting
point), I concluded that _sh@wa_ did in fact sometimes represent a real
vowel, which acted as a vowel in the phonological system of Tiberian
Biblical Hebrew.  However, _sh@wa_ under a word-final consonant does
not seem to have been ever "vocal" in the best pronunciation
traditions.

As for _wayyet._ from root _nun-t.et-yod_, the final _t.et_ is not
written with a dagesh because the consonant was not doubled
(geminate), due to a phonological simplification or degemination
process which applied to word-final consonants (this was a real
linguistic rule, not a mere orthographical rule).  You can see this if
you look at a parallel form with a _b@gadk@phat_ consonant, such as
_wayyakh_ from root _nun-kaph-yod_ -- in _wayyakh_ the fact that the
_k_ consonant has been degeminated word-finally is indicated by the
fact that it is spirantized.  If you ask why the second feminine
singular pronoun _'aleph-pathah.-taw-dagesh-sh@wa_ has a dagesh, while
_wayyet._ and _wayyakh_ don't, then the answer is that there are
various word-final truncation processes and epenthesis processes, and
these have different relationships with word-final degemination, and
with post-vocalic _b@gadk@phat_ spirantization.  The only situations
which can give rise to word-final post-vocalic consonants with
_dagesh_ are when a second-person feminine singular form originally
ending in _-tti_ (such as the original form *_natatti_ "you (fem.sg.)
gave", seen in the K'tibh to Ezekiel 16:18, or the second feminine
singular pronoun *_'atti_) undergoes truncation of the -i vowel, and
also when a derived consonant cluster created by truncation is broken
up by epenthesis inside a word-final consonant cluster when the first
consonant is a guttural consonant (as seen in _shakhah.at_ "you
(fem.sg.) forgot" with word-final _taw-dagesh_ in Isaiah 17:10; these
forms are mainly also truncated 2nd.sg.feminine forms, but in addition
there are the two lamed-he truncated forms _(way)iyh.ad_ with
word-final _daleth-dagesh_ in Exodus 18:9 and Job 3:6).  Note that
original word-final consonant clusters and geminates (such as those of
segholate nouns), which are not created by phonological truncation of
2nd.sg. feminine forms or lamedh-he forms, never give rise to
word-final consonants with dagesh; and such original word-final
consonant clusters almost never survive as surface Tiberian Hebrew
consonant clusters, except in a very few forms (namely the hapax
legomenon _qosht._, the late loanword _nerd_, and the proper name
_'ard_).  I discuss these matters from a linguistic point of view in
my dissertation (not sure how helpful it would be pedagogically).

Finally, there's the question of whether word-final consonants with
_dagesh_ in the Tiberian orthography were actually pronounced as
doubled (geminate) consonants (or just as consonants which are not
spirantized, in contrast to all other word-final post-vocalic
_b@gadk@phat_ consonants).  Here the final consonants of forms such as
_shakhah.at_ and _(way)iyh.ad_ certainly can't be geminates, because
they were never geminated in the first place; so the only possibility
of interpreting the final consonants of the second person feminine
singular pronoun, or the verb "you (fem.sg) gave" as geminates is to
suppose that there's some distinction in pronunciation between
_shakhah.at_ with word-final _taw-dagesh_ and _nathat_ with word-final
_taw-dagesh_ (Ezekiel 16:33, 16:36) which is not reflected in the
spelling.  I rather doubt this hypothesis of a hidden pronunciation
difference, which is why I don't interpret word-final consonants with
_dagesh_ as being doubled (so I would transcribe the
2nd.sg.fem. pronoun as _'at_, not _'att_).

You can download my dissertation from http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/
; questions of degemination, consonant-cluster break-up (epenthesis), and
spirantization are discussed in sections 1.1 and and 1.2 (so unfortunately
you'll have to download the large 1.5 meg whole-dissertation compressed
PDF file to read those sections).

--
Henry Churchyard   churchh AT crossmyt.com   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/