Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <vadim_lv AT center-tv.net>]

The below is a short summary of the hypothesis


calav - ca.lA.vu (1) - calAbbu (2) - cA.labb (unstressed final vowel lost) - 
cEi.labb (3) - cEil(e)bb - c(e)l(e)bI (4) - calbI or sifrI - calb or sifr. At 
the same time, cEil(e)bb - calb (5).



Notes:



1. The hypothesis is that all Hebrew nouns had penultimate stress (just like 
Germanic initial-stress-derived nouns). Morphological stress moved one vowel 
back to compensate for syntactical stress accompanying the nouns.



2. Consonant doubling occurs cross-linguistically to close an otherwise open 
stressed syllable with simple sound (a, i, u)



3. When consonant doubling is not an option (in the present case, it would 
have created callabb, unpronounceable), a stressed simple vowel in an open 
syllable is elongated to composite. Thus davar - doivar.

A composite stressed vowel in otherwise open syllable is closed with its 
second sound (tzere ae closes with iud, holam au should have closed with 
shuruk).



4. Stressed suffix reduces a vowel to schwa mobile. Thus, cl(e)bbI - calbi or 
sifri



5. Composite vowels in super-heavy CVCC syllables shorten to component sounds 
(ae - i or a), as in itlabesh - itlabasht.





Vadim Cherny