Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Steinberg <david.l.steinberg AT rogers.com>]

Stress-related lengthening of vowels seems to set Hebrew, and the other 
Canaanite languages, off from Arabic and Aramaic. As I understand it 
there were 3 rounds of stress-related vowel lengthening in Biblical 
Hebrew (in chronological order) -
a. c. 1000 BCE, triggered by the loss of case endings, the stressed 
short vowels were lengthened in nouns and adjectives in the absolute form;
b. post-exilic general lengthening of stressed vowels including in verbs;
c. lengthening of pretonic vowels

About the first of these Blau wrote (slightly adapted):
As for the dropping of the final short vowels, it took place ap­parently 
in three stages. At first, nouns in status constructus dropped their 
final short vowels ..., then verbs and at last nouns (including 
participles) in status absolutus. *Owing to the elision of short final 
vowels in the status absolutus, short vowels in the preceding open 
syllable which now had become closed, were compensatorily lengthened* 
(viz. a to a:, i  to e:, and u to o:; as *?da*gu > *da:**g* "fish"; 
ya*?shi*nu  > ya*?she:**n*  "sleeping"; ya*?gu*ru > ya*?go:**r*  "being 
afraid"). This compensatory lengthening did not take place during the 
dropping of the final short vowels from the status constructus and 
verbs, and since during its operation these word classes already 
exhibited closed final syllables, they were not lengthened at all 
(therefore:  *da*g "fish of"; shamar "he kept", with final short vowels, 
viz, patah. Since the sere and holem in "he slept" and "he was afraid" 
correspond to patah, they have to be considered short as well, whereas 
the same words when serving as participles contain long sere and holem; 
similarly nishmar qtl as against the participle nishma:r, 
hubhdal/yubhdal qtl/yqtl against the participle mubhda:l ).



My questions are, in the light of Blau's mstatement,



1. In pre-exilic Hebrew would the qal infinitive construct have been 
pronounced:

- in isolated form qu'to:l or q'to:l eg. lashu'mo:r or lash'mo:r - "to 
guard"

- in construct form qu'tul or q'tul eg. shumur ha'ish  or shmur ha'ish 
- "the guarding of/by the man"?



2. In pre-exilic Hebrew would <dbr> "word" have been pronounced:

- da'ba:r (<da'baru) in absolute singular

- dabar (<dabaru) in construct singular and

- daba'ri:m (<daba'ri:ma) in plural?



David Steinberg

http://www.houseofdavid.ca/