Biblical Hebrew Forum

["biblical hebrew" <jcr.bhebrew AT gmail.com>]

Hi Yitzhak,

sorry about the email troubles. My current Uni is changing their email
system (at long last) and this has caused problems which have prevented me
from posting to the list.

For the benefit of context my message to Yitzhak was along the lines of:

Aren't the quotes from much later than the Massoretes who invented the
system? If so, is it not possible that they are commenting on a later phase
of the evolution of pronunciation? If vocal schewas are a result of laziness
of speech in unstressed syllables with short vowels would not the next
logical step in such an evolution to be to not pronounce a vowel at all in
places where they are not necessary to produce a pronounceable word i.e in
between a consonant which closes a syllable and a different consonant which
starts a syllable? Double consonants would survive this change because of
the difficulty of pronouncing double consonants outweighing the advantages
of dropping a vowel.

I also asked if there was any transliterational evidence that predates the
Massoretes from a language like Greek whose vowel system I well understand
that supports the theory of silent schewas.

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James Christian Read - BSc Computer Science
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew       -  thesis1: concept driven machine
translation using the Aleppo codex
http://www.lamie.org/lad-sim.doc  -  thesis2: language acquisition simulation

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