Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> >What difference does that make for the argument? Elongated sound with
short
> >stop might be call aspirated plosive, or hoarse fricative (hoarseness
> >consists is mini-stops). ...
>
> No, it might not. A plosive is not a fricative, and a fricative is not a
> plosive. The sound in a fricative does not come from mini-stops. You are
> thinking perhaps of a trill, which is a series of mini-stops, or a flap
> which is one very short stop. But a fricative is something quite
different.
>
I would stop discussing this issue, since I don't see its relevancy to the
main argument. Quite obviously, ancient sound was in between pure plosive
and fricative, whatever we might choose to call it.

> >The begedkefet second radical in hitpael is plosified, not geminated. Not
> >hitcabbed, but rather, hitca.bed. ...
>
> There is no such distinction. At least, there is none written by the
Masoretes,

The Masoretes wrote nothing about gemination or plosification. If we look
for possible universal meaning of dagesh kal and hazak, there is only one: a
stop, intermission. The Masoretes meant stop where they put dagesh. All our
notions of gemination or plosification are deductions or a tradition; there
is no evidence that the Masoretes heard gemination where they put dagesh.

> this second radical takes dagesh whatever letter it is, except for the few
> letters which never take dagesh.
>

No one argues that the second radical takes dagesh. The issue is, what that
dagesh means? And I say, the dagesh cannot mean "both" gemination and
plosification simultaneously, that hitcabbed (plosification and gemination)
is unpronounceable, though more aspirated hitcannes (gemination only) is
fine.

> >In which Semitic languages are we certain of ancient
> >gemination or plosification of second-in-a-row consonant after "vocal"
schwa
> >(third radical in segholate, second in nifal, first in hitpael)?
> >Which Semitic language in antiquity consistently geminated or plosified
the
> >word-initital?
> >
> We are certain that there is NO "plosification" in any Semitic language
> at any time. And I never claimed that there is gemination immediately
> following another consonant.

Oh, now we are coming to the point. Dagesh hazak is a simple post-tonic
gemination, extremely common cross-linguisitcally in speech phonology. No
arguing about it. My initial question was--and now we could return to
it--where did the Masoretes heard (we agreed that they did not invent) the
second-consonant-in-a-row dagesh?
Or, recalling our agreement that second-in-a-row (including word-initial)
consonant in Masoretic phonology is closer to plosive than similar consonant
in other positions (see, I don't call it plosive or fricative anymore, just
relative), where did the Masoretes heard such "relative plosification" of
second-in-a-row consonants? The translators of LXX heard no such thing.
Nor is "relative plosification" of second-in-a-row common in other Semitic
languages.
Therefore, I suggest that the Masoretes heard this "relative plosification"
in very specific phonetic environment--in singing. Perhaps, the same effect
might also be recognizable in heavily guttural (lower-laryngeal) speech.

> Ultra-short a (hataf patah) contrasts only quite rarely with other
> ultra-short letters, but the reality of its phonetic distinction from
> ultra-short e (hataf segol) is clear in the distinction between the
> initial vowels (following alef) in names like Abimelech and Elisha,
> distinctions which are preserved also in LXX.

Abimelech is a compound name, with the sole vowel in "ab" being clear. But
that's not really the issue. Let us talk about the origin of dagesh kal.

Vadim Cherny