Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> I agree that Egyptian is quite close to Semitic. But many Arabic script
> languages like Persian, Urdu, Uighur and old Malay are not - except for
> a large number of Arabic loan words.

The written form of these languages is modeled upon Semitic (thus
vowelless), so we have a circular argument.

> >>And many languages including English omit semantically
> >>significant data - even Russian, which normally fails to distinguish in
> >>the orthography e.g. muka "flour" from muka "torment" (a stress
> >>difference), and vsye "all (plural)" from vsyo "all (neuter singular)".
> >
> >The Russian examples are incorrect, ...
> >
>
> How so? Except in books for beginners, мука "flour" (stress on а) and
> мука "torment" (stress on у) are written identically. I know that все
> "all (neuter singular)" can be written всё, to distinguish it from все
> "all (plural)", but the dots are in practice usually omitted. If I have
> got this wrong, please correct me specifically.

мука as flour is a new word. The original root is min - mon - mok - muk. I'm
not an expert in Russian linguistics, but the root is the same "min" as in
разминать (make softer). мука as torment is from mit - mot root, as in
мутить.
The example of все (all) is the opposite of what we encounter in Hebrew.
Russian example is a common simplification, encountered cross-linguistically
(I need not point to English simplification of French loans).

> >... but I accept your point that other
> >languages omit semantically significant stress. A likely explanation for
> >this, in my opinion, is that stress differentiated based on syntactical
> >usage. Thus, English speaker cannot confuse recOrd and rEcord even with
> >wrong stress because of the syntactical difference. So, stress is
meaningful
> >but usually unessential.
> >
> Just as in Semitic languages vowels are meaningful but usually
> inessential, because they can be derived from the context.

There is a huge difference between unmarked stress and vowels.
Unmarked stress differentiation appeared in highly developed language with
fluent speakers, while unmarked vowels should be suitable for humans just
beginning to talk.
Unmarked stress is positively identified by syntactical consideration in
almost all cases. Vowels cannot be unambiguously derived from context in
most cases. Ok, we might know from syntax that we deal with a verb. piel and
past and present tense of paal are written the same. And syntax might also
allow adjective instead of a verb. Without marked vowels, we don't know
davAr from dAbbar (haial form) or from segholate.
Unmarked stress produce ambiguity in perhaps 1% of the cases. Unmarked
vowel - I guess, at least in 50%. That's a lot of difference. People
recognize that vowels are necessary for modern writing: to my knowledge, all
other languages mark vowels.
Most certainly, "if" different vowels exist, it is necessary to mark them in
writing. Absence of vowels in Semitic testifies to non-differentiation of
vowels.

> >I would say that two vowels in Abkhaz are really allophones, originally
one
> >vowel. ...
>
> No. There are many allophones, determined by the phonological context.
> But there are two vowels which offer a real contrast, as has been proved
> by certain linguists.

Abkhaz is a developed language.
>From what I know about Abkhaz, the vowels are very close.

Vadim Cherny