Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

[Note:  Kevin Riley’s complete message is reproduced in full at the end of 
this post of mine, because I am not sure if it showed up on the b-hebrew 
list.  
His post should be read before mine.]
 
 
Kevin Riley:
 
1.  You wrote:  “How does the fact that heth changes to aleph in Assyrian 
mean that it is therefore a 'prefix'?”
 
Only if the letter in question is an initial letter that later got lost in 
Akkadian/Assyrian.  The permanent loss of an initial letter logically implies 
that it was not an integral part of the root, but rather was a mere prefix.
 
2.  You wrote:  “Hebrew did not take these words from Akkadian, but they are 
inherited from an earlier stage of Semitic ancestral to both.”
 
Perhaps so, though attested Akkadian writing is much, much older than 
attested Biblical Hebrew writing.
 
3.  You wrote:  “Hebrew changed X to heth, Akkadian changed heth to 'aleph, 
which
 was then often lost. So you find heth in Hebrew, X or 'aleph or nothing in 
the Akkadian cognates.”
 
Where an X or ‘aleph as the initial letter in an Akkadian word is dropped and 
becomes permanently lost, that logically implies that it had been a mere 
prefix, not an integral part of the root.
 
4.  You wrote:  “I do not understand why you got the idea that the gutturals 
are any less 'real' sounds in Hebrew than any others.”
 
A heth/X in Biblical Hebrew is definitely a real sound.  But in initial 
position, is a heth/X always an integral part of a word’s root?  No.  Thus in 
Aramaic, the heth/X in XQR) is equivalent to the prosthetic aleph/) in )QR).  
Both 
of those words mean “citadel” in Aramaic, and the root is simply QR.
 
Now we come to XBRN/“Hebron”.  Is that X + BR + N, where the heth/X is 
merely a prefix, and the root is BR?  That’s my theory of the case.  To my 
mind, 
everything that you and Yitzhak Sapir have said about Akkadian cognates on 
this 
thread appears to  be consistent with my controversial theory of the case.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
 
 
[Here is Kevin Riley’s complete post.]
 
Can we go back a bit here, please.  How does the fact that heth changes to 
 aleph in Assyrian mean that it is therefore a 'prefix'?  All the gutturals,
 except x, become 'aleph in Assyrian. You cannot pick and choose which cases
 become 'prefixes'.  Your argument makes no more sense than suggesting that
 when we see an 'h' in one language, and no 'h' in another [like in the
 Romance languages], that that indicates the first syllable is a prefix.  All
 it means is that language changes and sometimes 'h's are dropped.  The
 change from heth to 'aleph and then the eventual loss of 'aleph is no
 different. When it happened does not matter.   As Old Babylonian records
 show what is presumed to be 'alephs, it was earlier than about 2000 BC.  The
 loss of 'aleph was later than that. Hebrew did not take these words from
 Akkadian, but they are inherited from an earlier stage of Semitic ancestral
 to both.  Hebrew changed X to heth, Akkadian changed heth to 'aleph, which
 was then often lost. So you find heth in Hebrew, X or 'aleph or nothing in
 the Akkadian cognates.  I do not understand why you got the idea that the
 gutturals are any less 'real' sounds in Hebrew than any others.  If you took
 the time to learn a couple of Semitic languages, and perhaps a little
 historical linguistics as well you would not jump to some of the conclusions
 you do - or perhaps you would.  Just learning the conventions of how various
 languages represent sounds might be a good start.
 
 Kevin Riley

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