Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Hello John,

> So lets just keep my question as I asked it:
> Does the presence/absence of a dagesh (any type of dagesh - this even
> includes the mapiq) alone effect a change of any kind (excluding the obvious
> change in pronunciation)?

The question as I posed it is the question you asked.  In any case,
the answer is yes.  I find it slightly offensive that you are unwilling to 
take
my examples because of differences in spelling.  I took the time to answer
you and find references and examples, and you decide that although you
cannot determine if the way I posed the question means the same thing
as you do, you still think my answer is insufficient.  Wouldn't it be better
to try to understand the terms thoroughly to see whether there is a small
chance I may be indeed answering your question?  However, what you
don't realize is that these differences do not change the pronunciation.
Qubuts and Shuruq are the same vowel, except one has a waw and one doesn't.
Hiriq is the same vowel whether it is followed by a yodh or not.
Holam is the same vowel whether it is followed by a waw or not.
The differences in spelling arise mainly because of differing systems of
vocalization.  Before the Masoretes, texts were "vocalized" using aleph, he, 
waw
and yodh.  This vocalization is inconsistent and the same word could be 
spelled
once with and once without one of these letters.  In general, though, we can
discern some patterns.  For example, long word-final vowels are generally
vocalized in the consontal text.  Compare, however, Esther 9:27 where the
word wqbl is vocalized with a final long vowel.  The Masoretes' system is
consistent but is independent of the previous system of vocalization.  The
Masoretes themselves referred to these letters as "silent" letters.  That is 
why
they have a special sign for the mappiq -- to indicate it is not a
silent letter.
(Mappiq means, essentially, "pronounced").

It is also important to realize that the Masoretes' system of vocalization is
like all writing a poor system for transcribing speech.  The Masoretes use
hataf patah for short a-vowels in open syllables.  But for short a-vowels in
closed syllables they would use regular patah.  This means that
ha$omer - "keeper?" in "Am I my brother's keeper"  Gen 4:9
and
ha$$omer - "the keeper" Ps 146:6
would be vocalized differently, the first with a hataf patah, and the second
with a patah.  But the only vocalization difference between the two is the
doubling/gemination of the letter Shin.

Your requirement that the word appear in the Bible is also problematic.
While I realize the wish for it, you have to understand that the Biblical
authors wrote the Bible and only had an opportunity to use a subset of
the words in the language.  For their purposes, what matters is not
whether a word was used elsewhere in the Bible, but whether in the
language they used to write the Bible, there was a difference in meaning
between the two words.  They may not have had the opportunity to use
the exact two words that show that gemination was significant for
differentiation in meaning in their language.  But because we know how
to inflect words in their system, we can see that it was.  In order to
show that ?alpe ("two thousand of") is not a separate word from ?alfe
("thousands of"), one has to show that there was no such word ?alpe
in the language of the Biblical authors, whether they used it or not.
That is what Muraoka tries to argue in the article cited in the book
above.

So, like I said, the answer to the question is "yes."

Yitzhak Sapir