Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 1:45 AM, Brak wrote:
> Thankfully David Hamuel got it, and now Yitzhak got it as well.
> And I got my answer I needed.
> So just read their posts to which I basically commented "Awesome Job!!"  lol
>
> The words you just gave is what I'm talking about, but in the inverse -
> as the words mean the same thing despite the dagesh variance. I was just
> asking if there will ever be a varience in meaning due to the dagesh alone.
> And the answer demonstrated by David Hamuel and Yitzhak is an emphatic
> "YES!"

No.  You were asking if the variation of dagesh in writing can distinguish
within the primary morpheme as divided by CCAT between two different
words that are found in the Bible.  This is not the same as asking if the
variation in meaning is due to dagesh alone.  Language is not composed
of the written forms of the words.  It is composed of speech.  Let me
begin by giving an example.  In Gen 4:15, 24, we find the word yuqqam
(in the first case with a qamats).  The qamats/patah difference signifies
the difference between the "construct" state of the second word.  A
reader who reads this word asks himself what the word means.  For
this particular question, the reader needs to distinguish between two
possible different roots:  nqm - avenge, qwm - erect.   The dagesh
lets us know that the root is nqm.  However, you won't find the word
yuqam (without dagesh) in the Bible.  It's not that the word doesn't
exist in the language -- it's just that the Bible never makes use of it.
We know it exists because we can compare other roots having the
Pual paradigm, and we know how Pual behaves in words that have
-w- or -y- in the middle letter.  But just because the reader or
translator doesn't have the exact word yuqam elsewhere in the Bible
does not mean that in this particular case, the gemination does not
convey meaning.  The words of the written Bible are only part of the
larger language from which the reader and translators must determine
the meaning of the words.  It could certainly have been the case that
no such dual meaning would have been found in pairs written with
dagesh.  Just because we don't have written examples of such
doesn't mean that such pairs don't exist, because what matters is
the wider language and not just what is written in the Biblical text.

The moment the wider language is considered, you no longer have
spelling.  For example, the same word might appear once with a
waw and once without.  If the vowel is -u-, then the vocalization in
the first case would appear with a shuruq and in the second with a
qibbuts.  But the word is the same and the vowel is the same and
the pronunciation is the same.  The only difference is the way they
are spelled.    From the point of view of the translator or reader, the
words are the same.  Coming back to the question of dagesh, the
question must be: are there two words with different meanings in
the Biblical Hebrew language that have the same pronunciation
except for the dagesh.  Since we are now dealing with pronunciation,
we must distinguish between the various types of dagesh that have
different implications for pronunciation: gemination, plosive/fricative,
or mappiq.  The answer must consider all words in the language,
not just the words that the Bible happens to have used.  It must
consider only words that have the same pronunciation except for
the particular feature in question, such as gemination.

And here is the thing, all the examples you have now accepted
have two differences in pronunciation!  For example, in the case
of qinnim/qinim, the words are:
[qin-'nim] compartments
[qi:-'nim] lamentations
In one the i is short and in the other long!  In one the n is doubled
and in the other it is not!  In order to compare pronunciations we
must have exactly the same pronunciation except for the
particular linguistic feature we want to examine.  That's not the
case here, and because of the way Tiberian Hebrew behaves, it
won't be in any of the examples you accepted.

It so happens that in Tiberian Hebrew, open vowels are generally
long.  Short open vowels are written using a schwa or hataf.
Because of the gemination, in one case the syllable is closed,
so we have a short vowel, and in the other the syllable is open,
so we have a long vowel.  Thus two words with the same
pronunciations but for the dagesh would have two different
spellings.  We had one such example so far: ha$omer vs.
ha$$omer.  The spelling is different in two aspects but the
pronunciation is different in only one.  In all the examples you
now "accepted," the spelling is different in one aspect but the
pronunciation is different in more than one.  For the reader and
translator, only the pronunciation matters, not the spelling, and
for both, all the words in the language matter, not just those
that the Biblical authors happened to use.

You came here asking about the wheels of a car.  The
mechanic told you that the question you are asking is related
to the engine.  You insisted on getting on an answer to the
wheels.  So now you are all happy that you got an answer
about wheels and you think you know what is going on with
the car.  But you don't, because you refused to learn about
the engine.  It doesn't help that you had to keep several
mechanics guessing as to what you want, and you also
seemed to mock some of the comments along the way.

Yitzhak Sapir