Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Kevin Rileywrote:
> The two questions are however related, as it was the gemination that
> prevented lenition in bgdkpt.  If we assume that lenition is a post-exilic
> phenomenon, then had the Hebrews prior to the exile used the Tiberian
> notation, only geminate consonants would have been marked with dagesh.  It
> is interesting that native speakers often do not feel the need to mark
> length in either vowels or consonants.  When they do so, it is usually out
> of concern for those who are not native speakers.  The Finns are one obvious
> exception to this.

Are you sure about that issue with native speakers?  Arabic marks length in
vowels.  It is standard in Latin script orthography to mark length in
consonants.

The questions, or rather gemination and spirantization, are obviously
related and
they interact.

I found the following article on the subject:  http://www.jstor.org/pss/417134
Robert Kirchner, "Geminate Inalterability and Lenition",  Language 76/3 
(2000),
p. 509-545

Yitzhak Sapir