Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Isaac,

It seems to me that you are guilty of reading the modern language back 
into the classical language. When you said that you've heard of newish 
grammars no longer representing dagesh, I assume you mean grammars of 
Israeli/Modern Hebrew. (If not, please produce the references of newish 
grammars of BH to which you refer; I know of no such works.) Note that 
the modern language, in contrast to the classical language, pretty much 
does not treat gemination as phonemic. To treat the classical language 
in such a way means that you have to make the absurd claim that dagesh 
indicates that the preceding vowel is an /i/. We don't have to look far 
to see that such a hypothesis simply does not work. In contrast, viewing 
one of the functions of dagesh as marking gemination does in fact work, 
which I assume is why this view is universally articulated in the 
grammars of the language. However, for one adopting a linguistically 
unsupportable approach to the language such as yourself will of course 
view things entirely differently from everyone else. This does not make 
your results fact, even though you continue to assert them as fact. 
Rather, it simply means that your results likely do no represent the 
linguistic reality of the language because your methodology and theory 
which you bring to the language is unsound.

Regards,
David Kummerow.


> Jason,
>
> Arab diction has its peculiarities which are of no concern to Hebrew.
> There is a universally natural doubling of a consonant located
> between two vowels, for instance DIBBER, 'he spoke', but this has
> nothing to do with the dagesh in the B. There is no indication that
> an exaggerated, over-natural, doubling, say DIB---BER, was ever
> practiced in Hebrew.
> I think that the purpose of the dagesh in B of DBR is only to
> indicate the lack of the preceding vowel I.
> Notice that no doubling may occur in DIBRAH, 'she spoke'.
>
> Isaac Fried, Boston University