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  • From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] About Dagesh's
  • Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:35:35 +0000

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 11:42 PM, Isaac Fried wrote:
> Yaakov,
>
> Notice the curious rendering in Exodus 2:21 of Σεπϕωραν
> [Sepforan] by the LXX for ZIPORAH the wife of Moses. It has a P and
> an F! See it for yourself at

This does not indicate an F. Only Latin could differentiate an aspirated
peh and an F. It indicates: [sˤippʰoran], or alternatively a long aspirated
p.
The similar phonology is also recognized in the name of the town
Sepphoris [sˤippʰori]. Possibly we might suppose that the Greeks heard
the aspiration rather late in the vocalization of the p.
Alternatively, emphatic
consonants tend to have an effect on one another. Thus, *qtl "kill" became
q-tˤ-l. Similarly, in hitpael, we find that emphatic consonants
(except q) turn
the t emphatic as well. nisˤtˤaddaq < *nisˤtaddaq. Possibly, the Sade
caused the p in the first syllable to become emphatic. In other words, in
special cases where aspirated [pʰ] was postvocalic, and in the same syllable
as [sˤ], we had [pʰ] > [pˤ]. In turn, the Greeks transcribed it with
a pi instead
of phi, just like emphatic k (quf) and t (teth) were transliterated
with a kappa
and tau, and not chi and theta.

Yitzhak Sapir



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