Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 12:00 AM, John Steven wrote:
> I was wondering, does the presence/absence of the dagesh alone change
> the meaning of the word in any way?
> Now I understand that sometimes when words changed form that a dagesh
> may be added/removed - but as far as I know it is always accompanied
> with vowel changes as well.
> So I am wondering if there is ever a case where you have the exact same
> letters and vowels, but different Dagesh configuration which will have
> different meanings?
>
> To give an example of what I mean:
> B.:R")$IYT
> B:R")$IYT
> Different Dagesh configuration - same meaning.

What you're asking in linguistic terms is: is gemination phonemic?
You even go so far so as to describe a minimal pair -- two words that
have different meanings but differ on only one phonetic difference,
indicating that phonetic difference has implications for meanings of
words.

The question should be considered separately for the dagesh forte (the
doubling/gemination) and dagesh plene (the one in bgdkpt, which is what
you have in your example).  You also have to realize that the question
deals with the Tiberian Hebrew vocalization, where you find the dagesh.
A similar question can be asked for the vocalization of ancient Hebrew
but for that you have to deal with reconstructing words and their
pronunciation.  For the dagesh forte, see the minimal pairs here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=s1MSQuK_gi0C&pg=PA70
(I think the minimal pairs are hypothetical though, in the sense that
in each pair, one word may not be present in the Bible in that exact
inflection.  However, we realize that in the Biblical language, this is
how the word would be vocalized, had the Biblical author used that
inflection).

For dagesh plene (the spirantization issue), there is an example of alpe
("two thousand of") vs alfe ("thousands of").   But see the following
comment in the same book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=s1MSQuK_gi0C&pg=PA494
In the article mentioned in the footnote he argues that it is questionable
whether the dual would have been used in the construct state, in such
a situation.  That is, it is not clear that there really could have been a
word "alpe."

A different more simpler question may be: Can I read the Bible without
having to force my pronunciation?  The answer is yes.  The differences
are subtle, and many modern Israelis when reading the Bible are not
directly aware of them (they assume that Biblical Hebrew is close to
modern Hebrew and in modern Hebrew, gemination does not exist).
However, you will miss out on the subtle differences, and on important
clues that will allow you to tell various forms one from another.

Yitzhak Sapir