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  • From: Peter Bekins <pbekins AT fuse.net>
  • To: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Masoretic Pointing and CV-syllables
  • Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 15:16:57 -0400

Karl,

Yes, that is sort of what I was implying. The other example is $FW:). These forms reflect spoken language which suggests that the Masoretes were, at least in part, recording a tradition of pronunciation and not arbitrarily creating and applying phonological rules, otherwise we would expect these forms to have become segholates. To be sure, the Masoretes did synthesize phonological rules, and there is some levelling of the text because of this, but the text does provide important historical data.

BTW, you mentioned your difficulty in reading Mishnaic Hebrew. Mishnaic Hebrew is heavily influenced by Aramaic, in fact in some rabbinic passages the language switches back and forth between the two (which is fun when you are a beginning student). There are also some Greek loanwords thrown in here and there. If you had studied some Aramaic or Syriac along with your Biblical Hebrew then you probably should have been able to figure it out, but I wouldn't quite make the analogy BH:MH as KJV:NIV.

Pete


On Aug 18, 2007, at 2:18 PM, K Randolph wrote:

Pete:

There is a simple answer to your question below, namely that words
that are spoken often and quickly often become contracted and
shortened over time. Thus words like X+) would have had their final
vowel swallowed yet understood, while words that were used far less
often such as D$) retained their final vowel for understanding. By the
time the Masoretes wrote down their pronunciations, they recorded the
contracted versions that were in use in their day.

An example in English would be the use of "not" after a verb. For
those verbs where it is not often used, or for emphasis, it is still
fully pronounced and spelled out. But after common words such as do,
did, would, it has long been contracted, even in writing. Now even
those contracted spellings do not always reflect spoken
pronunciations, where "didn't" often becomes "dint" or even "din" with
no loss in understanding, and the same sort of swallowing occurring
with the other common contractions, with no loss in meaning.

That Mishnaic Hebrew would have had the same sort of contraction
should be expected.

Karl W. Randolph.

On 8/18/07, Peter Bekins <pbekins AT fuse.net> wrote:

...
... The
interesting question is why wasn't there an epenthetic vowel thrown
in? There are other lamed-aleph qitl segholates such as DE$E) "grass".

...

Pete Bekins
Grad Student, Bible and Comparative Semitics
Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, OH





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