Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

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