Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Trevor Peterson" <abuian AT access4less.net>]

----- Original Message Follows -----
> From: Vadim Cherny [mailto:VadimCherny AT mail.ru]
> Sent: Fri 4/29/2005 1:44 AM
> To: abuian AT access4less.net; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Why Semitic languages had no
> written vowels?
>  
> > > I don't exclude that some vowelless script predates
> > > cuneiform. I know this is an unorthodox view. But we
> > > have too little epigraphic material to be certain
> otherwise. >
> > True, but we do have epigraphic West Semitic, and its
> > derivation from Egyptian is fairly well established.
> 
> I thought that the relationship is established, but
> derivation? We are very uncertain even about the spelling
> of Egyptian texts. I was under impression that West
> Semitic and Egyptian are branches, not consequtive stages.
> In fact, there is much controversy even on relation of
> East and West Semitic. So it's all speculation.

I was referring to the scripts, not the languages. Egyptian
script and cuneiform both show a development from
logographic to phonemic, where signs originally representing
whole words or ideas were extended in their usage. The
general pattern was to let a given sign stand for a sound
associated with its word--the initial sound in most cases,
as I recall. These signs were then standardized as the
regular representation of certain sounds. (In cuneiform,
there are often multiple signs that can be used to represent
a given syllable.) Add the simplification of sign shape
(which particularly with cuneiform often results in a final
shape that bears little resemblance to its original form),
and you have the the general trend from pictorial logograms
to more or less arbitrary symbolic representation of
phonemes. This development happened internally within
Egyptian to the point that signs representing individual
letters were a regular possibility. West Semitic seems to
have borrowed this latter convention and abandoned the rest,
resulting in a small sign set that could be learned more
easily. But because Egyptian represented consonants only, it
was natural for them to keep the same pattern.

> Epigraphic West Semitic of possibly pre-cuneiform origin
> (at least, pre-syllabic cuneiform) is, to my knowledge,
> scarce. It seems to me that West Semitic is much closer to
> cuneiform (or, perhaps, vice versa) than to hieroglyphs.
> Cuneiform looks like cursive West Semitic. This is
> subjective, of course.

I really don't understand the connection you're trying to
make here. Cuneiform has its own history back to linear,
logographic forms but developed wedge-writing early on, to
make use of clay as the primary writing material. Egyptian
retained its linear form and provides a more suitable base
for West Semitic.
> 
> > If our comparatively significant body of evidence for
> > Egyptian and cuneiform script development makes it
> > nearly impossible to say which came first, then it seems
> > like a stretch to suppose that West Semitic script
> predates either one.
> 
> We have A (Egyptian), B (cuneiform), and C (West Semitic).
> We know little of A-B relation. What does this imply about
> B-C relation?

The point is that we have a great deal of evidence taking us
back to essentially the same point in Egyptian script and
cuneiform. It's possible that one was derived from the
other, but it's hard to say. The point is that you're trying
to argue for some ultra-primitive origin of West Semitic
without any evidence that it was even in use at such an
early stage. Given the natural pattern of derivation from
the earlier, complex scripts to the simplified abjad of West
Semitic, it doesn't seem like there's much room for your
idea.
> 
> > But even if it did originate before, why wouldn't they
> > have chosen a different writing system as the language
> changed?
> 
> *** In my opinion, or rather a guess, word hieroglyphs and
> cuneiform are the earliest signs. Then appeared West
> Semitic script for still single-vowel language. Then
> vowels diversified.

When do you think this happened? A century or two is a close
enough estimate.

> Then appeared abujad,

What do you mean by this word? How is it different from West
Semitic script?

> and syllabic
> meanings of hieroglyphs and cuneiform. Then matres
> lectionis. Then vowel marks and diacritics. ***
> 
> > If Ugaritic was being written side-by-side with
> > logosyllabic Akkadian, and as you say at this point the
> > vowels were differentiated, why would they not have been
> > inspired to write vowels?
> 
> Why English speakers weren't inspired to add a symbol for
> ch, as in Chicago, and another - for ch, as in chaf?

This is a fairly minimal variation. I'll repeat what I've
said before. If you're going to say that a vowelless script
can't be explained except by a vowelless language (or one
that doesn't differentiate vowels), then I don't see how you
can allow for several centuries of continued usage of the
same vowelless script, long after vowels had differentiated.
It was apparently not such a difficult system to use that
the Phoenicians ever had a problem with it. And if it makes
sense that it would have derived from Egyptian script, where
signs only represented consonants anyway, there is a
perfectly good historical reason for vowelless writing that
doesn't involve sweeping conclusions about primitive
phonology.
> 
> > It seems to me that your theory requires an
> > explanation of this point. If a vowelless writing system
> > can only be explained by an absence of vowel
> > differentiation, then significant phonemic
> > differentiation of vowels would have created enormous
> pressure to adapt the writing system.
> 
> It did. Masoretic vowel marks, Arabic diacritics.

As I'm sure you know, it was not the mere existence of vowel
differentiation that created these adaptations. They did not
arise until the scripts had already been in use for
millennia during which, as you've already admitted, vowels
were in fact differentiated. It was only when such factors
as the importance of sacred texts and shifts away from
living language communities required serious measures to
retain vocalization in writing that these diacritic systems
arose. But if you agree that the pressure I described above
is real, you have not yet explained how they apparently got
along just fine for centuries even without matres lectionis.
> 
> > And the contact with cuneiform would have compounded
> > this pressure, because it was clearly evident that a
> > writing system could accommodate vowels.
> 
> Or, rather, that it is extremely inconvenient at add
> vowels to a writing system.

The inconvenience of cuneiform is overstated. It was used
throughout the ANE to record some of the simplest
transactions and communications, for both official and
personal matters, to jot down notes and tallies, and adapted
to several different languages. If lack of written vowels
was as much of a problem as it must have been under your
theory, surely they would have considered cuneiform
superior. Alternately, they would have recognized the
benefits of encoding vowels and created some way to do so
long before we actually see matres lectionis arising. (And
in places like Ugarit and Phoenicia, they never did.)
> 
> > Indeed, Ugaritic script does seem to have been
> influenced by cuneiform in its
> > wedge-formation.
> 
> Why are you sure about the direction?

Ugaritic is obviously derived from the West Semitic linear
script, which is attested in primitive form much earlier. By
this I mean that the inventory was derived, not the shapes
of the characters. The shapes were developed to allow more
efficient writing on clay, and the logical inspiration would
have been cuneiform. Considering that Ugaritic was rather
localized and later than a good deal of attested cuneiform,
it seems almost out of the question that influence ran the
other way.
> 
> > Vowel writing did eventually develop in the form of
> > matres lectionis, but in Phoenician, for instance, it
> > never seems to have caught on.
> 
> Only because Phoenician was frozen at early stage.

Frozen by what, and in what sense? Are you saying they
stubbornly clung to a confusing and nearly useless script,
despite the available innovations? Or does this actually
show that it was not so difficult to use a vowelless script,
and perhaps it is even conceivable that they could have done
quite well with it from the beginning, even if their
languages had vowels?
> 
> > Why not, if it is so inconceivable that a
> > vowelless writing system would work for a language that
> > differentiates vowels?
> 
> *** I don't argue that vowelless system "does not work"
> for a language with differentiated vowels. Rather, "if"
> the vowels are differentiated before emerging of a writing
> system, then it is bizarre not to include them in writing.

Why? Because it doesn't make any sense to you? Would we have
done any different in their shoes? If the system developed
as a simplification from Egyptian, there is a perfectly
reasonable explanation why it did not encode vowels. Scripts
never encode everything about the phonology of a language,
even potentially significant elements. Writing was intended
as a rough and ready substitute for spoken language,
primarily for use by native speakers. It could get by with
omitting a lot. Isn't it even more bizarre that someone
would have come up with a writing system like cuneiform,
which did encode vowels but generally as part of syllables.
To get there, though, they had to learn hundreds of signs,
many of which had alternative substitutes and mutiple
values, including both phonemic and logographic. Who would
create such a monstrosity? But lets give these people some
credit--writing has only been invented from scratch a
handful of times. Just figuring out a way to codify language
was a huge first step, and simplifying it to c. 25
characters instead of hundreds was a monumental development.
Just because they didn't get it all the way to what we're
familiar with doesn't require some extraordinary
explanation.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics