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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] comparative historical linguistics was Re: Nun-Tav-Vet root

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] comparative historical linguistics was Re: Nun-Tav-Vet root
  • Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:13:44 +0000

On 25/11/2006 17:23, K Randolph wrote:
Peter:

On 11/25/06, Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org> wrote:
On 25/11/2006 06:33, K Randolph wrote:
...
In West Semitic, but we are discussing Biblical Hebrew, and the
evidence indicates that sin and shin were one letter with one
pronunciation in Biblical times.

Well, if you accept that sin and shin were separate in West Semitic, but
insist that they were one letter in biblical Hebrew, let's see what that
implies. It must be one of the following:

1. Biblical Hebrew is not related to West Semitic, despite that fact
that you can read and understand West Semitic (Phoenician); I can't
believe that even you insist on that.

2. Biblical Hebrew has a common ancestor with West Semitic in which sin
and shin were distinct (this is the normal scholarly position), and West
Semitic preserved the distinction, whereas biblical Hebrew lost the
distinction, but it reappeared later, before the time of the Masoretes.

3. Biblical Hebrew has a common ancestor with West Semitic in which sin
and shin were not distinct; West Semitic innovated the distinction in
ancient times, and Hebrew separately innovated the distinction in
post-biblical times, before the time of the Masoretes.

There are more options, but one is that West Semitic innovated the
distinction apart from Hebrew, and after Hebrew ceased to be a native
tongue, people speaking Aramaic applied the Aramaic distinction and
rules to Hebrew writing and learned speech.

That is my option 3, if not option 1. Can it explain all the distinctions? Possibly, but I doubt it. How did Hebrews know to pronounce their word for "bull" shor rather than sor, when the Aramaic is tor? But shor fits the reconstruction from the common ancestor. And that's a quick example from memory.

... You
also refer to "the paucity of roots differentiated by shin and sin, as
rare as what is expected if they originally were one letter, not two".
But is this actually true? Just looking at words (not roots, verbs
written unpointed) starting with sin or shin, we have the following pairs:

$B( / &B(
$BR / &BR

$BR has evidence that it was two roots, while based on function it
appears that &BR and one of the roots for $BR were connected.

$GG / &GG

&GG is not attested to in Tanakh that I could find.

I have &GG listed as the root of תְּשַׂגְשֵׂגִי T.:&AG:&"GIY in Isaiah 17:11. My list is based on the Westminster parsing database.
$GH / &GH

&GH looks like a variant on &G), a final aleph and hey are sometimes mixed.

Nevertheless I have it listed as the root used in Job 8:7,11; Psalm 73:12; 92:13.
$DD / &DD

Again look at the action, both deal with overturning (in the case of
plowing, of dirt, not other people)

$WX / &WX

&WX is a happax, probably a copyist error for &YX

$W+ / &W+
$WR / &WR

&WR not attested to

For this one I have two homonyms listed, each a hapax, "contend" at Hosea 9:12 and "saw" at 1 Chronicles 20:3.
$XH / &XH

Both have the same meaning, indicating same root

$X+ / &X+
$XQ / &XQ
$YX, $IYXFH / &YX, $IYXFH

Both have the same meaning, indicating same root

$KK / &KK

&KK not attested to in Tanakh

This one is listed as a variant of SKK in Exodus 33:22.
$KL / &KL
$KR / &KR
$N) / &N)

$N) not attest to in Tanakh

This is a variant of $NH in Lamentations 4:1 and Ecclesiastes 8:1.
$(R, $A(AR / &(R, &A(AR

$(R root not attested to in Tanakh, the noun could be a loan word,

Proverbs 23:7.
$QD / &QD

Both have the same meaning, indicating same root

$QR / &QR

&QR is a happax for applying mascara (even the English word is
related), but is not applying makeup a type of deception?

$RH, $FRFH / &RH, &FRFH
$RR / &RR

...
Now I accept that there are many roots in biblical Hebrew which are
homonyms (although most of these are easily explainable by hypothesising
loss of phonemes from earlier forms of the language), also that some of
the pairs I have listed may not be clearly semantically distinct (I
haven't looked at definitions, only a list of lemmas). But your
hypothesis would have to explain not only why there are so many of these
pairs but also how they came to split apart in a consistent way when (on
your hypothesis) sin and shin split apart.

My hypothesis, that in Hebrew the split was applied from another
language, does explain the consistency of that split in both Hebrew
and other cognate languages. It also explains the fairly high
percentage of cases where the sin and shin denote the same meaning.

I note also the extreme rarity of words starting with sin - lamed, which
to me is most easily explained by avoidance of two lateral sounds
together, thus strongly suggesting that sin had some kind of lateral
sound at the time when sin and shin were distinguished.

If you include samekh as having the same pronunciation as sin, they
are not that uncommon.

I don't. Well, by late biblical times samekh and sin had the same pronunciation, and consider also the shibboleth incident, but in earlier times they were distinct letters, with sin very likely being a lateral fricative (like Welsh "ll"). This explains why Hebrew Kasdim (with sin) is English Chaldeans - in Akkadian I think this letter was sometimes transcribed as "s" and sometimes as "l".
...

Yes, linguists and language learners have to be trained to recognise and
produce phones from previously unfamiliar languages, and after a certain
age this becomes more difficult. Like learning Hebrew, it is difficult,
but not impossible. That is why I reject your "some people can't",
unless because of specific disability.

I'll admit that some of the "can't" is attitudinal, but it still
results in a can't.

Not to people whose job is to change attitudes, which in fact should be part of any good teacher's job.
...

I still think that a lot of the speculation concerning linguistic
history is irrelevant to the study of Biblical Hebrew, because
ultimately we deal with the text as we have it. The language history
won't change what we have.

Yes, maybe you are right here. But I think it can help us with explaining some obscure words, and perhaps in finding obscure homonyms.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/





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