Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 27/09/2004 12:55, VC wrote:

> ...
>
> > It seems very clear to me as a linguist that surface forms like MELEK
> > are a recent phonological development from underlying MALK etc.
> >    
>
> It seems not less clear to me that melek arose from melk (with tzere), not
> from malk. How would the patah produce e-sound?
>
>  
On your theory, how would you get the possessed form malki from melk? 
And how would you get the different paradigms beged > bigdi, neged > 
negdi, sefer (first vowel is tsere) > sifri? The whole thing is more 
complicated than you seem to realise, and can be sorted out only by a 
detailed phonological study. Harold has provided some pointers to the 
work on this e.g. of Coetzee.

> > Hebrew inserts a vowel and makes a compensatory change to the preceding
> > vowel, which is not found in inflected forms.
> >    
>
> Would you recall any instance in Hebrew when two segols arose from anything
> else than tzere-shwa? Gesenius presumes they arose from patah-shwa.
> In general, would you recall segol-compensatory shortening of any other
> sound than tzere?
>
>  
Two segols more or less implies a segolate noun or adjective, so this 
question becomes circular. But here is an example: yedkem, with two 
tseres, from yad + -kem. Gesenius (9f) writes: "Segol... by origin 
belongs sometimes to the second, but most frequently to the first vowel 
class... It belongs to the first class when it is a modification of 
a..." His evidence is mostly from comparisons with Arabic, but many of 
these can be confirmed by comparison with a whole set of other Semitic 
languages. The cognate of Hebrew 'erets has an initial a vowel in 
Ugaritic, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, Soqotri and Mehri, which is a fairly 
good indication that the "a" vowel (also found of course in many Hebrew 
forms) is original and the segol a modification of it, rather than vice 
versa.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/