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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew grammar, (was Zech 6:8)

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  • From: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew grammar, (was Zech 6:8)
  • Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 20:47:25 +1000


Hi Rolf,

I've just gotten home and in checking my email I see much more has been written. I hope to write more in the morning, but before I head off to bed again (the reality of being a human!), just a quick question regarding your response to Herman.

RF:
The Masoretes would not dream of inventing anything new. They were extremely
careful to point and vocalize the text exactly as they heard it recited in
the synagogue. However, the recitation of a narrative text would probably be
different from the recitation of a hortatory or future text. My suggestion
is that verbs in a narrative text were recited with retracted stress,
causing a closed syllable with patah and gemination (the WAY- prefix), while
this was not the case with hortatory and future texts (which got the
WE-prefix). Since patah and shewa were pronounced similarly, this was for
the Masoretes simply a matter of stress and intonation and not a semantic
distinction. But later grammarians misunderstood this, and ascribed a
semantic
distinction to the difference between WE- and WAY-, and the consecutive
model was born.

I am wondering what your evidence for pathah being pronounced similarly to shewa is? I thought that that shewa only approached such a pronunciation when it received the ga'ya accent. I could be wrong, but then I am also convinced that the grammaticalisation of Hebrew by the stage of the Masoretes meant that a seven vowel system was in place. This has bearing on the pronunciation of shewa and syllable structure.

Everyone else seems to argue the other way round to you: everyone else seems to argue for two forms with different semantics, the reason for which they are used in different text-types; whereas you seem to argue for one form being used across the board and then only secondarily becoming differentiated.

What do you make of the differences in the hiphil?

What do you make of word order and mood, that is, do you agree with Holmstedt, Niccacci, Cook, etc that modal word order is prefix verb first and indicative word order is prefix verb second? Do you agree that the more fixed word order in this regard is due to the two forms (ie jussive and indicative verbs) have become the same (except for some verbs in hiphil) due to grammaticalisation?

Regards,
David Kummerow.




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