Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Yitzhak:

Peter Kirk already well answered some of your objections. 

Karl W. Randolph.


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
> 
> On 2/3/06, Karl Randolph wrote:
> 
> ...
> > The evidence for Biblical Hebrew having had a CV
> > structure is again theory, in this case my own based on
> > reading Tanakh a few times through in unpointed Hebrew.
> > That influenced me to believe that each letter originally
> > stood for one consonantal sound, in contrast to the
> > Masoretic pointing of two sounds for some of the letters.
> > When read in that way, many words are unpronounceable
> > except as CV syllables, hence my theory.
> 
...
> 
> Second, the evidence you brought for those letters being
> unpronounceable was from Modern Hebrew, against which
> evidence was brought that 1) you are wrong (on the Ayin/
> Aleph unvocalized issue), 2) your knowledge of Modern
> Hebrew is faulty.  You have not answered those criticisms.
> 
Unless you claim that "Modern Hebrew" is not the same 
as what in common parlance is the name for the language 
spoken in modern Israel, then the pronunciation I was 
taught is similar but not the same as Modern Hebrew.

Secondly, I have come to the conclusion that even that 
modern reconstruction of Masoretic pronunciation is most 
likely incorrect when applied to the Biblical period.

> Finally, even if you prove that some or many words are
> unpronounceable except as CV words, that doesn't mean
> that the rest of the words that are left are unpronounceable
> except as CV words.  It's quite possible for a language to
> have some CV words and some CVCC words etc.  In order
> to prove your theory you have to somehow show that *all*
> words were unpronounceable except as CV words.
> 
No I don't. Especially since neither it nor its converse 
are provable.

> Yitzhak Sapir

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