Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

Modern spoken Hebrew completely lost schwa and dagesh, certainly dagesh kal, 
in only a century since its reinstatement as living language. Is it plausible 
that schwa and dagesh persisted for millennia, to be heard by Masoretes? 
Hardly so.

No other language has general plosification of word-intitial fricative, or 
the fricative following closed syllable. The dagesh kal does not correspond 
to any existing phonological tradition.

So why Masoretes added schwa and dagesh? They did not write grammar, but 
faithfully recorded the synchronic phonetics. Could the actually "hear" schwa 
and dagesh?

For a possible answer, note that other masoretic marks are only used for 
singing. Why assume that schwa and dagesh were intended for speech? What if 
the Masoretes intended them only for cantillation, and Ben-Yehuda wrongly 
applied schwa and dagesh to spoken Hebrew?

The dagesh kal and schwa are clearly pronounced--exactly where the Masoretes 
put them--in singing. After phonological experiments with opera singers 
(special thanks to Irene Zarutzki), several facts became clear:

while post-tonic gemination occurs in speech, plosification (dagesh kal) and 
vocal schwa consistently occur only in laryngeal singing

since singing requires the consonants to be "coated" with vowels on both 
sides, schwa after closed syllable must be vocal

when two consonants occur in a row, stop must be made between them to clearly 
sing the second consonant (nata n.bakar; niz.kar). After-stop fricatives tend 
to be sung more like plosives.

Syllable-final consonants are softened, "fricativized." The resulting 
elongation of "fricativized" consonant turns into semi-vowel, making the 
vocal schwa.

Two plosives in a row are not pronounceable. This is why word-initial 
plosification is lost after b, k, l prepositions (boker - b(e)voker), but not 
after the sustained m preposition (m:boker).

I also tested the singing of the sophit letters. They are indeed sung 
differently from the medial counterparts, because their--and only 
their--amalgamation with subsequent word-initial consonant, especially with 
plosive, requires an epenthetic sound (mele kh(u)zadok). This effect, evident 
is singing, is only slightly perceptible in speech, suggesting that ancient 
language was more musical.

I presume throughout that Masoretes intended each mark for a single 
phenomenon. The dagesh (both hazak and kal) is a stop; gemination or 
plosification is straightforward phonological consequence of stop. All schwas 
were intended as vocal.

I would appreciate comments and discussion of this topic.


Vadim Cherny