Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>]

>===== Original Message From Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org> =====
>I wonder if this initial shuruq was originally consonantal vav (still
>with a w sound) pointed with qubuts. That would accord with the similar
>rule for other prefixes before a sheva: the sheva becomes hiriq after
>B-, K- and L-; but after W- hiriq would be replaced by qubuts by
>assimilation.

It would also accord with the way the rule of shva is applied to the 
conjunction in Babylonian pointing. Whichever comparison you want to make, 
you'd expect a silent shva following.

>Later, when most w's came to be pronounced as v (anyone
>know when this was, by the way?) this vav would not have changed because
>of its context and so would gradually have been simplified to a long u
>sound.

I don't know that we'd even have to worry about when the /v/ sound 
originated. 
It could have simplified to u before that ever happened. (Note that at some 
point very early on the conjunction in Akkadian became /u/.) Why would it 
have 
to be a long-u, though? The vav is morphological, so it tells us nothing 
about 
length. We might suppose that it was long by contraction, but the 
pronunciation of the vav could also have dropped off, without any real 
contraction.

>These changes may have affected the pronunciation of the
>following sheva, but more probably did not.

Good point. But if the shva did not re-vocalize, I would think it more likely 
that the /u/ was short.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics