Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Trevor Peterson" <06peterson AT cua.edu>]

Peter wrote:

> How do you distinguish <C, sheva, C> from <C, dagesh>? e.g. 
> how do you 
> write what is HAL:LW. YFH. in M-C encoding? Would you write 
> halluw yahh 
> (with superscipted w)? There is something missing here, 
> surely.

I've been thinking about this a little bit more. It seems like this sort
of situation would arise under two conditions--where the first consonant
is either lengthened or semi-lengthened. By that I mean, gemination of
the first consonant is what keeps the two consonants from converging in
the first place. In such cases, the writing of three identical
consonants in a row would be a dead giveaway that this is what's going
on. Then there are cases where gemination is not marked, both in what we
call virtual doubling with gutturals, and situations where gemination is
unmarked before a shva (our example of halelu). In these cases, the
preceding vowel still fits a closed syllable; so, as Jouon argues, there
is still some degree of consonantal lengthening present, albeit
unmarked. Now, one strategy might be to put the gemination back into the
transcription, but that would give the impression that there is a dagesh
in the Hebrew text. Another option might be to indicate the
semi-gemination somehow graphically, like a superscripted l (or whatever
the consonant might be). Not that a superscript is a much better choice
than a subscript, and it seems like the whole thing could start to get
cluttered (not that it would be much worse than what we have in the
Hebrew text itself). In any event, I'm not sure that I like forcing a
writing of three identical consonants in a row. As I said before, the
best solution might be to find another way to indicate the presence of a
dagesh forte. Maybe it would work to put the lengthened consonant in
bold.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics