Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> Vadim, thank you for putting forward this version of the argument that
> apocopation is a phonological issue, since Rolf has tried to argue that
> this is a phonological issue but has never I think given any details of
> how the phonological changes might work.
>
> If this hypothesis is to be taken seriously, we need to work on three
> things:
>
> 1) Is it true that in WAYYIQTOL verb forms the accent is "shifted"?

The answer, I venture, is not straightforward but depends on the
environment. The accent shift has to do with secondary accent on wa. Such
accent parallels the secondary accent on ha, as in hAbbOker. Why the
secondary accent?
One reason is that otherwise pro-pretonic vowel would tend to contract,
wayyomEr - w'yomEr. The Masoretes shifted accent in chanting to prevent the
contraction of wayIqtol into weyiqtOl.
Another reason is that the particle wa is morphologically independent of
subsequent word and retains its own accent. The secondary accent is, in my
opinion, responsible for post-tonic gemination (dagesh hazak), wa+yomEr -
wAyyOmer.
Third reason for the accent shift is common usage of wayyiqtols with
subsequent noun, as in wayyomer elokim. There is a similar English
convention, thirtEen, but thIrteen hundred.
Fourth reason for the accent shift is the specific soft intonation of
recital. Again appealing to Russian parallel, "и сказАл" becomes "искА:-зАл"
(and pronounced - andprO-nOunced).
In the end, the word had three accents: on wa (reasons 1-2), on the second
vowel (reasons 3-4), and the third vowel (original accent of omEr). That mix
caused accent shift to the penultimate syllable.
There is an opposite tendency. Accent shift causes hirek to be stressed,
wayyIqtol. That's counter-intuitive for Hebrew speakers because only final
hirek could generally be stressed. Absent of the specific chanting
intonation, wayiqtOl would retain the original ultimate accent.

> Presumably you mean it is shifted on to the penultimate syllable, as in
> Hebrew (at least, Masoretic Hebrew) it can never move further forward. I
> think you mean to suggest that this rule applies to all WAYYIQTOLs and
> not just to those in lamed-he verbs. So, is it true that all, or almost
> all, WAYIQTOLs, have penultimate stress - presumably excluding those
> ones which have completely lost a final unstressed syllable like WAYYEVK
> and I suppose WAYHIY.

It seems to me that most wayiqtols have penultimate accent, but that it is
not a strict grammatical rule but rather a matter of pronunciation in
chanting or recital. Singers and even poets not rarely shift accents.

> (I note that the anomalous non-apocopated
> WAYYIQTOL at 1 Kings 18:32 is stressed on the final he, in the Masoretic
> text, but perhaps this is a Masoretic oddity.)

In 1Kings18:32, I could note the combined role of et, ha, and word-initial
aleph, waivneh et-haavanim. The resulting accentuation, wAivnEh-et-hAavanIm
is logical.

> 2) What is the explanation for this "shift"? Why does it happen in some
> verb forms and not in others? Is the distinction a semantic one, a
> phonological one, or a matter of free variation?

It seems to me to do with moraic stress, wayyOmer, watE-dabEr. That could be
important in chanting or recital.

> 3) Is it true that all final unstressed vowels have been lost? Clearly
> not, for there are unstressed final vowels in Hebrew. But is this true
> of (WAY)YIQTOL verb forms? Or is it a general phonological rule e.g. for
> E vowels but not I vowels?

That I'm not sure about. The rule, if any, is likely to account for context
and intonation of phrases rather than work on the level of words. The same
word could contract in one context and retain the final unaccented vowel in
another context.

> We need to examine issues like this in detail before we can conclude
> that apocopation is a phonological issue. Of course we are limited in
> what we can do in that our only good information on stress in Hebrew is
> from the Masoretic text, and so some time later than the first texts in
> which apocopation was written and at a time when WAYYIQTOL was pointed
> as a separate conjugation.

We might have extra-Masoretic evidence. Hexapla shows wayiqtols with ou,
like weyiqtols, and has no gemination. It seems that the Masoretes
introduced the differentiation between wayiqtols and weyiqtols.
Another possible evidence is lack of post-tonic gemination in the second
root letter, wayyOmer rather than the expected wayyOmmer. That suggests that
the accent shift, if any, occurred rather late after the "strength" of
consonants was fixed.
Overall, it seems that the accent shift is chanting phenomenon rather than
grammatical rule.

Vadim Cherny