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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] CV syllables, was music in Hebrew

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  • From: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] CV syllables, was music in Hebrew
  • Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 03:09:15 +0000

On 2/7/06, Peter Kirk wrote:
> On 06/02/2006 19:31, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
> > I think you misunderstand me. I am referring to the possibility
> > that a pre-exilic -h was a consonantal -h (just like feminine
> > possessive is still consonantal -- mappiq) and may have even
> > had a following vowel as well. I am not referring at all to -h
> > representing a long "a" vowel at the end of the word that
> > changed to -w with the "Canaanite a -> o shift."
> >
> This is a possibility. But you have no way of knowing whether a
> pre-exilic -h was pronounced -ha, or (clearly pronounced) -h, or -o, as
> both endings can be written exactly the same in unpointed texts. So you
> have no evidence of a change from -ha to -o.

The standard reconstruction of this particular development is: *-ahu > *-au
> - *o^. Now, both Davila (blog post in Karl's response and his Orthography
article that he quotes there) and Sarfatti, "Hebrew Inscriptions" (Maarav 3/1,
1982 -- a source Davila references in his Orthography article and which is
my source for the above reconstruction) assume this change to have
occurred by the "Biblical period." But I am not sure what is the basis
for assuming the development had proceeded through the *-au and
*-o^ stages in pre-exilic times, as opposed to *-ahu being the pre-exilic
pronunciation while *-au and *-o^ are the post-exilic ones. This is not
something that cannot be proven -- all we need is an example of -h
representing -o^ in pre-exilic times for which there is no explanation or
reconstruction as having a consonantal value. I am not sure there is
such an example.

> I don't think you actually know what you are talking about here. I am
> not an expert, but this is the situation as I understand it here in the
> UK. Chaucer is published and read both in its original middle English
> and in translation into modern English, because the middle English is
> too difficult for many readers. But Shakespeare is almost never
> translated into modern English, but is printed and performed more or
> less as written. Words in Shakespeare are never substituted, and in
> general archaic spellings are not updated.

Compare:
http://ise.uvic.ca/Texts/Rom_M/Scene/1.1 (Modern) or use your own text.
http://ise.uvic.ca/Texts/Rom_Q2/Scene/1.1 (1599) which says it is peer-
reviewed, but seems to have been scanned and still have sections that
have not been corrected after the scan.

This was simply an observation based on the above.

> But modern editions do
> distinguish "u" and "v", and "i" and "j", although these pairs of
> letters were not distinguished in the first printed folios of
> Shakespeare. In other words, modern editions of Shakespeare (and
> similarly of the contemporary King James Bible) use different spelling
> conventions from the original. But they cannot be considered as
> translations into a different form of English.

Why not? What makes something into a translation rather than a mere
"updating"? If you replace "Early Modern English" words in a given
document with "Late Modern English" words why is that not translating
even if you maintain to use in the replacement only the later evolved form
of the "Early Modern English" word?

Also, in Shakespeare as perhaps the KJB, there are different
considerations of maintaining the original text or poetry which I am not
sure were present for Persian period Judaean scribes who were using
pre-exilic period documents.

In this connection, the following article may be informative:
http://www.penguinclassics.co.uk/nf/shared/WebDisplay/0,,62049_1_10,00.html

> Surely, Yitzhak, you recognise that by updating such spelling
> conventions in Shakespeare it is not being translated into fully modern
> English, and by updating the Torah to match modern Hebrew spelling
> conventions it would not thereby be translated into modern Hebrew. Even
> if you write a WAYYIQTOL form with a full complement of matres
> lectionis, it doesn't thereby become a modern Hebrew verb form.

But it may no longer be the Biblical verb form, if you give me different
vocalization than the original was meant to have -- you may be giving me
a literary construct that never had existence in spoken language except
for liturgical purposes. So you can't claim that it is still the same or
probably the same. You may still claim that it might be the same, but
with differences in spelling, this might be an improbable position.

> But you can't argue that the original pronunciation was in fact different
> just because the old spelling would have allowed it to be different. Yet it
> seems to me that by your method of reasoning the change of spelling
> implies that "Iuliet" must in fact have been pronounced "eye-oo-li-et".

It is a fact that the pronunciation was different:
http://www.bartleby.com/224/1502.html

And I think the spelling partly reflects that. Also, following the above
article on Shakespeare and Sarfatti, there are examples of slight changes
in meanings in various words. Two examples from Sarfatti - "(wd" is an
adverb in the Bible but a noun (remainder) in the pre-exilic inscriptions.
")dm" is in some cases the indefinite pronoun "someone, anybody" -
"()rwr h)dm )$r yptx )t z)t" while in the Bible only ")y$" serves this
purpose. This suggest that even if the Bible is in part pre-exilic
in origin (a statement with which I agree), perhaps a certain level of
modernization of the lexicon also took place.

Yitzhak Sapir




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