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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew pronunciation etc. (again!)

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  • From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew pronunciation etc. (again!)
  • Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 13:56:20 +0200

On 1/7/07, Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com> wrote:

> Actually the same is seen in the Masoretic punctuation for gutturals, as
> in the paradigms of verbs with guttural letters: a silent sheva is
> regularly replaced under a guttural by a hataf matching the preceding
> vowel as follows:

I agree that there are such cases where a guttural that originally had a
schewa takes the quality of the previous vowel rather than the schewa
taking the quality of the following vowel. However, this is why there are
signs for hataf patax, hataf segol and hataf qamats, and why they are
consistently always marked under gutturals.

I think that some of the rules stated for the schewa also relate to the
guttural taking the preceding vowel. Thus, in the word [be)e:r] "well",
the actual development appears to be *bi)r > *be)r > *be)er, and the
guttural is really taking the preceding vowel. In Massoretic terms,
however, this is written with a schewa before the guttural. Other
examples, such as THWM [toho:m] would appear to represent
a more ancient pronunciation. Compare cognates tiha:m and dhira:(
for THWM [toho:m] and ZRW( [zoro:a(] but also Amarna Canaanite
zu-ru-uh which could be taken to suggest that the form *qita:l >
qoto:l by Amarna times, but in the Massoretic transcriptions
this was maintained only in cases where the middle letter was
a guttural. In other words, the rules for a schewa as indicated
combine both a guttural truly being influenced by the previous
vowel and also other situations.

Yitzhak Sapir




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