Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - [b-hebrew] (no subject)

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Peter Bekins <pbekins AT fuse.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] (no subject)
  • Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:11:34 -0500

Or there was a consistent sound change so that in Akkadian all laryngeals - ), h , ḥ, (, and ġ were reduced to aleph which wasn't indicated in the orthography when word initial.

Your example of )QR) is attested in Syriac, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic and Mandaic, all eastern dialects, where the change of ḥ > ) is also common, most likely because of Akkadian influence (See Kutscher, "Aramaic", in Linguistics in South West Asia and North Africa (Current Trends in Linguistics 6), 373). In contrast, XQR) is attested in Jewish Literary Aramaic which is a western dialect. There is no attestation of QR for citadel, nor are )QR) and XQR) "interchangeable" in any given dialect.

Peter Bekins

Conclusion

An initial heth/X in Biblical Hebrew is not always part of a word’s original
root. A word that begins with a heth/X may be simply a variant of a word that
begins with a mere vowel-type sound, such as an initial prosthetic aleph (or
a yod/Y, etc.).

So )BL and XBL may have the same root, and be mere variants of the same basic
word. And YBL. And XBR (since resh/R and lamed/L were sometimes
interchangeable in the Bronze Age).

We see that an initial heth/X is, in some cases, much less important than is
usually supposed, being the functional equivalent of a mere prosthetic aleph.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page