Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> From: "jeremy N" <jnorthct AT hotmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 19:47:58 +0800

>> From: "Henry Churchyard" <churchh AT crossmyt.com>
>> Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 09:54:06 -0500 (CDT)

>> the masculine and feminine numerals 2-9 basically show normal
>> patterns of morphological and phonological alternation in their
>> construct and absolute forms i.e. orthographic final _qames._ +
>> _he_ in absolute becomes short vowel + _taw_ in construct; vowels
>> in pre-main-stress open syllables which are lengthened in absolute
>> are instead reduced to _sh@wa_ or a _h.at.eph_ vowel in construct;
>> etc. etc.).  The only particularly noticeable peculiarity that I
>> see is that five and six have absolute forms _h.amishshah_,
>> _shishshah_, but construct forms that look like they should go back
>> to historically earlier forms *_h.amisht_ and *_shisht_; however,
>> true historical forms ending in _-iCt_ generally went to _-aCt_, so
>> that the long _s.ere_ vowel seen in construct _h.ameshet_ and
>> _sheshet_ is probably due to a fairly late analogical development
>> (however, the same long _s.ere_ vowel is seen in _'eshet_ as
>> construct of _'ishshah_...).

> If I understand what you are saying correctly, the original absolute
> form may have been hamisht and shisht, which would produce the
> construct forms hamasht and shasht.

Would tend to produce ("Philippi's law" etc. -- there are analogous
exceptions, and reconstructing all the historical developments that
have occurred in connection with Philippi's law is rather
complicated).

> If this is correct, then the absolute forms would have been later
> thinned down to hamish and shish, as all feminine nouns terminating
> in 't' went to 'h'.

This is not the case -- feminine _t_ only went to orthographic _h_
when preceded by an original _a_ vowel (not a vowel later inserted by
segholate epenthesis), and then only in certain contexts (e.g. in the
absolute state, but not in the construct state; in the unsuffixed
3rd.sg.feminine perfect, but not when the verb has object suffixes
added).  The "inversion" between masculine and feminine numbers can't
be explained phonologically -- other older Semitic languages, which
don't necessarily have the same _t_ vocalization also show this
phenomenon.

> But because hamishshah and shishshah would normally require the
> construct forms to be hamishshat and shishshat,

Just like 'ishshah requires **'ishshat as construct?  ;-)


> For example, I wonder to what degree the problem presented by
> "hameshet" and "sheshet" is simply the result of Masoretic meddling
> based on the vocalisation of the day?

Not really sure what you're implying -- if you're saying that the
Masoretes vocalized according to the pronunciation current in their
day (as used in formal cantillation), which had undergone a number of
linguistic developments (sound changes and analogies) as compared to
earlier historical stages of the language, then of course that's true.
But if you're implying that the Massoretes made changes in the
vocalization at their whim to meet the requirements of far-reaching
abstract speculative grammatical theories about what the nature of the
Hebrew language should be, then that's the same fallacy I was
referring to...

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