Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

----- Original Message Follows -----
From: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
To: <abuian AT access4less.net>, <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Why Semitic languages had no written
vowels?
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 19:25:18 +0300

> I don't say it's impossible to use vowelless script for
> multi-vowel language. Rather, it is implausible that
> people who developed script omitted semantically
> significant vowels. Say, someone charges you with
> describing a map in words. You would try to be
> sufficiently specific to avoid confusing places. This what
> I expect from authors of script. Who would deem acceptable
> a script that does not unambiguously relate words?

Some of it depends on what you mean by ambiguous. I remember
in an article by Schegloff the observation that there are
several types of ambiguity in language that are ambiguous
only to an outside observer, but ambiguities to the
participants are comparatively fewer. Is it ambiguous that
in English "read" can be pronounced like "red" or like
"reed," with a difference of tense between the two? Or that
spoken /red/ can mean a color or a past-tense verb? Yes, in
a sense, there is some ambiguity here, but as used in
context, the ambiguity almost always disappears. It is also
ambiguous that often a declarative statement and a question
are indistinguishable syntactically in English (and in
Hebrew, for that matter). But in English the distinction is
often expressed through intonation, or in writing through
the use of a question mark. In BH, there is no question
mark, and nothing to tell us if the intonation would have
been helpful. In any case, the combination of grammar and
writing system failed to convey for us whether a statement
was a question or not. In many cases, we can identify that
something is a question easily enough (because the context
makes it clear), but sometimes it truly is difficult to
tell. Does this mean that questions did not exist when the
Hebrew script and orthography were developed, or is it
simply that ambiguity is sometimes inevitable?

You say that the vowels are the morphology in Hebrew, but
clearly this is not entirely true. There are consonantal
prefixes and suffixes for most verbal forms. Yes, some of
them end up looking the same in the script, but in most
cases the appropriate meaning can be selected. You have
brought up the distinction between Qal and Piel, but from
working with Ugaritic, I can tell you that even from the
remote perspective of a modern scholar, we can usually
select the appropriate stem form. Yes, it would be easier
with vowels indicated, but it is by no means impossible
without them. The other problem with your analogy is that
there is no case in which we're talking about someone
sitting down and trying to construct a writing system from
scratch. They started with logograms and progressed from
there. Signs were recycled to write phonetically such things
as proper nouns that could not easily be conveyed
logographically. The initial systems were needlessly
complicated from our perspective, but they were working from
what they already had, making minimal adjustments for
greater range of use or efficiency.
> 
[snipped]
> 
> That does not explain why Egyptians used vowelless script.
> People who certainly had vowels employed syllabic writing.

That's just reversing what is given, that we can only be
certain of vowels where we see them in writing. But clearly
there were vowels where they were not written, as you admit.
As for explaining Egyptian, I'm not going to try to do so.
For one thing, it has nothing directly to do with BH, so
this is hardly the place for it. I've already mentioned that
the ANE list would be a better place for it. For another
thing, as I've already said, I don't know much about
Egyptian.
> 
[snipped]

> Vowelless writing is not an impossible instrument for
> multi-vowel language, just very odd to create. I cannot
> think of any other descriptory instrument in any area of
> human activity, which incorporates clear ambiguity.

As I've already pointed out, ambiguity is there in pretty
much every writing system, and at pretty much all levels of
linguistic structure. But the interaction of the various
levels tends to clarify ambiguity, and this is also the case
with written forms in context.

> Is it
> a coincidence that no other script in human history, to my
> knowledge, was vowelless? Sure, such a coincidence is
> highly improbable. Thus, we might look for explanation,
> why Egyptian and West Semitic scripts are vowelless. The
> only explanation I imagine is that they did not need
> vowels. It is not hard proof, just reasoning.

But if we're just going to throw out suggestions, why not
allow that they could live with the ambiguity? And if you're
going to talk about the origin of scripts in human history,
what other original script did you have in mind (i.e., a
script that was not derived from this one but went straight
to pure alphabetic with vowels written)?
> 
[snipped]
> 
> > 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.
> 
> They did not realize the tremendous advantage of vowels,
> but rather thought of syllables as single sounds. I think,
> distinction between consonants and vowels was realized
> much late. Egyptians and/ or Western Semites possibly
> heard not syllables, but only consonantal sounds.

But if it could take time to realize the distinction and the
advantage, as you say here, why is it so implausible that
people got by with writing consonants only?

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics