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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Why assume the Masoretes recorded spoken Hebrew?

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Vadim Cherny <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Why assume the Masoretes recorded spoken Hebrew?
  • Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 15:08:14 +0000

On 11/02/2005 14:29, Vadim Cherny wrote:

...

... or plosification. ...

Of course not, because this exists only in your imagination.


Peter, if you want to reject the existence of begedkefet pairs, of bet and
vet, this is ridiculous. They do exist. ...


Of course they exist. And they exist because plosives became fricativised, not vice versa. At least, there is very good evidence that the process went that way. You are asserting that the process went the other way, but have given no evidence for this.

...

Gemination in LXX is only post-tonic, thus natural. I'm talking of kal.
Dagesh "causes" gemination, but dagesh does not "mean" gemination, rather a
stop. ...


Dagesh doesn't "cause" anything. It is a mark indicating something. It does not indicate only gemination. It appears to indicate either gemination or lack of fricativisation. But maybe there is some common factor to these.

...

Perhaps I should reiterate my position; it is not far from yours, actually.
I don't believe that begedkefet pairs existed at the time of the Masoretes.
Strict (unaspirated) plosive begedkefet's appeared when inter-consonantal
schwa became silent. At about the same time, begedkefet's in other positions
became more aspirated than before, and eventually fricativised. Possibly
this happened under the influence of modern European languages, or to better
distinguish "normal" begedkefet's from second-in-a-row ones. This process
created begedkefet pairs.


Actually this is indeed not far from my position, although I would suggest that more of the changes had happened before the Masoretes.

I therefore believe that both dagesh kal and hazak originally caused only
gemination. Only later, when inter-consonantal schwa became silent,
gemination was replaced with plosification (in the sense of aspirated
plosives becoming unaspirated).


Did this loss of aspiration actually happen? Are modern Hebrew word-initial pe, tav and kaf aspirated or unaspirated? Maybe it depends on the speakers' former homes.

Why the dagesh kal was only applied to begedkefet? To answer this question,
ask why the Masoretes needed dagesh kal. The likely answer is, to avoid
"eating" the second-in-a-row consonant. Why, then, of all consonants, only
begedkefet's tended to be "eaten"? Because they were more aspirated than
others.


What is wrong with the obvious answer, that only these consonants had distinct plosive and fricative forms?

...

If this was a phonetic process, why did not it affect other Semitic
languages, where the word-initial does not differ in aspiration?


Because by that time other Semitic languages were developing in isolation, or dying. Of course in Arabic pe/fe was fricativised in all positions at some time, so was gimel/jim in most dialects.

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



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