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  • From: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
  • To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Why Semitic languages had no written vowels?
  • Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:20:18 +0300

I wonder if anyone would like to discuss this topic.
The absence of vowels is puzzling: why omit meaningful morphological data?
Shorthand writing doesn't just omit characters, but rather uses new symbols
instead of common combinations of letters. As far as I know, no other
language deliberately omits morphologically significant letters.

In my opinion, Semitic languages had no vowels because there was no
distinguishable vowels originally. All words sounded like C'C'C', then CaCaCa
with kamatz. The last vowel sound was naturally reduced.

Later, the vowel sounds differentiated because of syntactical accent. For
example, since verbs are generally followed by nouns, verbs have ascending
syntactical stress. This feature elongated the second vowel sound: catAv -
catAav* - catAiv* - catEv. Thus could appear tzere. (We also see an effect of
syntactical accent in pausal forms.)

Alternative elongation produced holam: gadAl - gadAul* - gadOl.

When the Masoretes introduced stops (dagesh), vowels in so limited syllables
shortened. This produced patah, as diber - dibarti, nizcher* - nizcar.

Also, short vowels appeared when complex vowels (tzere, holam) lost stress,
such as in gadOl - gdulAh.

Any opinions?

Vadim Cherny







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