Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 11:44 PM, Kevin Riley wrote:

> But, did not qamats develop from an earlier long A?  The question then is
> when that happened.  Was it before the LXX was written, or was it later?
> Yes, the development from AW -> AH or AW -> OH is more likely than OH -> AW,
> and fits with the development of Hebrew better.  But again, you need some
> way of knowing at what point in time one can assume the development to have
> occurred.  This is one case where checking what other systems have would be
> worthwhile.  Is the word pointed with AH or OH pointing in the other
> systems?  Your point about holam developing to qamats is a good one - is
> there evidence for holam becoming qamats?  The Greek transliteration
> certainly does not rule out the possibility that it was qamats and
> pronounced AW.

Just because long a: developed to long qamats does not mean that all long
qamats had their source as long a:.  According to Geoffrey Khan, the long a:
to qamats development is later than the 5th century CE.  That would explain
why it is not in the Palestinian tradition.  (Incidentally, the
Ashkenazi reading
developed from the Palestinian tradition.  It also had a long a: to qamats
shift, but it came later, under the influence of German).

Naomi's (modern pronunciation here) name might be compared to qutl nouns
that are suffixed with the 1cs possessive.  For example, )hly in Jer 10:20.
The qutl nouns derive from an original u: )uhliya > )uhli:.  It is
reasonable that
in Naomi's name, there was also an original u, and in fact, that it was also
originally a qutl form: nu(mi:.  The thing is, and this answers Rivka's 
question
in the other mail, -u- wouldn't have been represented in Greek by omega.  It
would have been represented by "ou" in the transliteration.  We know various
u developed in Tiberian in some cases to qamats -- the word )hly is one
example, also the name mrdky (from Marduka) with the dalet carrying a hataf
qamats that originated in an u sound.

In light of the fact the Septuagint records an omega, it might be reasonable
to suppose that the u > qamats had already taken place back then.  I really
don't have any other way to explain it.  We essentially *know* there was an
original u in these words, and it is very reasonable that omega would not have
transcribed an u sound.  If in other vocalization systems, we see a holam we
would have to suggest some process that explains both, and this probably
means either (1) u became qamats which became holam or (2) u became
holam which became qamats.  The thing is, in addition to original u, there
are also cases of "original" o (holam) (from diphthong contraction and such).
So if the second alternative is accepted, we would expect cases where
original o became qamats as well, and I don't think there are examples of
these.

I have been reading here about all kinds of variant vocalization systems,
but unfortunately, while I have many resources at hand that touch on the
issue, I do not have an understanding that allows me to explain and suggest
a consistent coherent and systematic explanation of the vocalizations.

Yitzhak Sapir