Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 8/31/07, Dr Raoul Comninos wrote:
> The most useful article I have read on the shewa is by William
> Chomsky: "THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE SHEWA". I can email a copy to
> anyone interested in reading it. In it, he argues principally against
> the notion that shewa is vocal after a long vowel. It IS vocal,
> according to the article:
>
> * at the beginning of a word
> * after another shewa
> * under a consonant doubled by a dagesh
> * under the first of two like consonants
>
> However, it is not vocal in the middle of a word, not even even after
> a long vowel. That a shewa IS so pronounced is, according to Chomsky,
> the incorrect view of David Kimhi.

A schewa is only vocal under the first of two like consonants if it follows a
long vowel (that is, an open syllable or a stressed syllable).  A holam and
tsere are always long.  Obviously, if the schewa was not vocal, the
preceding syllable would not be open, so there is some measure of
circularity here.  The Massoretes knew how to pronounce the words so
they did not have this circularity problem.  Nevertheless, because the
issue is limited to mostly cases of like consonants, it is not as big a
problem.  In many cases (for example, Ex 15:10 cllw), the schewa was
clarified with a hataf patax.  There are various cases where it isn't
vocal and this leads to a doubling of consonants.  For example,
[hinni:] in Gen 6:13.

A vocal schewa was always a full vowel.  It was an open short vowel,
whose quality depended on the following syllable.  In other words,
because of the syllabic structure of Hebrew at the time of the
Massoretes, the schewa had a special status from the point of view
of the Massoretic syllable, but it was still a full vowel.  In most cases,
it was pronounced as a short "a", like a hataf patax.

Yitzhak Sapir