Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <abuian AT access4less.net>]

Vadim Cherny wrote:

> Even omitting the prefixes, vowels show the form.
> In most cases, vowels are the only morphological instruments.

I assume you're blending derivational and inflectional morphology.
> > 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.
>
>
> How? I don't think that meaning of paal and piel so diverges that it could
> be usually derived from context.

Partly you seem to be oversimplifying the relationship, which happens to 
be one of the most notoriously difficult in derivational morphology. 
There are plenty of cases where the difference is obvious. Partly there 
is a diachronic issue here. If we're supposed to be talking about a 
stage that far predates attested West Semitic languages, who's to say 
that the force of the Piel wasn't quite different, or perhaps even 
non-existent?
>
[snipped]

> I'm not an expert on writing systems, but I didn't hear of any other
> vowelless script. When Sumerians created cuneiform for developed multi-vowel
> language, they resorted to syllabary. Why no equivalent stage in West
> Semitic?

I don't recall you answering my question about other alphabetic systems 
that have arisen from scratch, complete with vowels. But while you're 
thinking about it, I'll provide an answer here. A syllabary must always 
have a larger inventory of signs and is therefore more difficult to 
master. The point of the West Semitic innovation in borrowing from 
Egyptian was to create a simpler sign set, which could not have been 
done with a syllabary. Since that was the only other way that vowels had 
been represented up to this point, it's perfectly understandable why 
they wouldn't have gone in that direction.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics