Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Shai Heijmans" <shaih AT post.tau.ac.il>]

Hi Michael,

Reduction of unstressed vowels is a very normal process in all
languages; you don't need to have special factors.

Take for example your sentence:

> I asked for theories about what
> linguistic factors might have contributed to the
> reduction of the first syllables

Look carefully, and you see that almost all unstressed vowels are
reduced. Take for instance the word "con-tri-bu-ted". The primary stress
in in CON and the secondary is in BU. The rest of the vowels are reduced
to shwa (TRI, TED). And the same with "asked", "about", "factors",
"reduction", "syllables" - all unstressed vowels have become shwa.

The real question is not why vowels were reduced in Tiberian Hebrew, but
rather what made some unstressd vowels maintain their distinct
character. *THAT* might be the influence of Aramaic.

Shai


> -----Original Message-----
> From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org 
> [mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of 
> Deborah Millier
> Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2004 3:32 AM
> To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: [b-hebrew] Re: Ancient pronunciation of biblical names
> 
> 
> SHALOM KHAVRIM,
> 
> A few days ago I asked a question that is of
> particular interest to me...but apparently not to too
> many others.  I asked for theories about what
> linguistic factors might have contributed to the
> reduction of the first syllables in so many of the
> Tiberian renditions of names and words.  I mentioned
> that since Aramaic often retains the older
> pronunciations (as we understand them), Hebrew's
> prolonged exposure to it probably wouldn't count as a
> real factor.  I then asked about prolonged exposure to
> Greek, although I don't have the linguistic know-how
> to evaluate whether this might have even made a
> difference or not.  
> 
> As I randomly go through Greek names in my mind, I
> discover that stress tends to be on the first or
> second syllable, with a few exceptions.  So this line
> of thinking seems to do little good unless second
> syllable stresses (E.g. tim-O-the-os) affected Hebrew
> name pronunciations to the point of reducing the first 
> syllables.  I'm rambling because I have just an intro-level 
> (2 semesters) of linguistic training. 
> Therefore, I'm really trying to coax others among us,
> with better linguistic foundations, to try their hands
> at speculating about what factors may have contributed
> to this phenomenon in Tiberian Hebrew.  Any takers?
> 
> KOL TUV,
> -- Michael Millier
> 
> P.S. One person (sorry I deleted the message so I've
> forgotten your name) suggested, along with a
> commentator he had read, that because ancient-ancient
> people spoke slower than just ancient people, words
> became veritable acronyms.  I have a problem with that
> view for a couple of reasons:
> 
> (1) We can speculate how fast ancient-ancient people
> spoke, but we have no evidence to my knowledge that it
> would have differed substantially from the simply
> ancient people.  I mean, how could we know?  And how
> fast can people's speech speed up?  We're still not at
> the "acronym" stage in most modern languages that I
> know of.  Furthermore, I have heard pre-literate
> people who spoke their language at breakneck speed and
> I have heard those in great centers of industry who 
> d-r-a-w-l-e-d painfully.  
> 
> (2) I might agree that the tendency of modernity is to
> speed things up, but Tiberian Hebrew was not modern. 
> And then-contemporary Babylonian Hebrew (same general
> time-frame) maintained some of the older
> pronunciations.  Therefore, according to this
> "speed-up" theory, how would this evidence be
> explained?
> 
> 
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