Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Hello Jim,

I agree with Kevin.

I think you are making several errors here.

First, you are taking various typographical schemes too "literally."
Traditionally,
an underdot has been used to denote various sounds that do not exist in
Semitic.  This includes the emphatic sounds.  In transcribing a written 
system,
this can generate some confusion.  For example, it is clear that Old Aramaic
distinguished all three Sade sounds, but since Old Aramaic is written using
the 22 letter alphabet and Sade is used to represent two different sounds,
only one letter (generally s with an underdot) will be used to represent Sade
in Old Aramaic.  There is no implication on the part of the
transcriber that the
letter was pronounced the same everywhere or that he is committing himself
to some particular pronunciation of Sade.  The same can easily go for the
Amarna letter correspondence.  When I transcribe emphatics on list, I
generally use apostrophe (s', t', etc) because it is easier to pass in
ASCII and it reads better than c or +.  But it is purely a writing convention
to describe emphatics.

In recent decades there has been some discussion about how the emphatic
was realized in various languages.  This is because (I think) in modern
spoken Arabic, the emphatics are pharyngealized, while in modern spoken
Ethiopic, they are glottalic.  I think Faber represents a very convincing
argument that they are glottalic everywhere except in Central Semitic.  In
some other texts, there is even a discussion of whether the emphatics
in Arabic are pharyngealized or velarized.

Lameen, in the blog you cited, is unsure so he represents both.  He uses
s with an underdot to represent pharyngealization, even though today the
IPA sign for pharyngealization is a small superscript IPA Ayin symbol.
But this doesn't mean that when you read a text that has Tyre spelled with
an underdot s they specifically mean pharyngealization.  They really
just mean an emphatic s.  In pronunciation, this could be realized as a
pharyngealized or glottalic variant of [th], [l~], [ts], or [s].

You are also taking Lameen's words out of context.  He does not
distinguish between "best" and "second best" (or "b-e-s-t" vs
"s-e-c-o-n-d best") guesses.  He just wants to remain uncommitted to
the pronunciation on the glottalic vs pharyngealized question .  You
are taking his attempt to remain uncommitted and suggesting he is
committing himself to a glottalic pronunciation.

I want to tell you something here.  In general, I think it is commendable
that you look up references and study up on the issues.  More than
anything, you treat people respectfully on the list.  But here you are
taking something someone said and turning it into something totally
opposite.  This is not very helpful.  It can be annoying.  Does he say
"best" or "second best"?  No, he does not.  So why are you putting
words in his mouth?  This is one kind of thing that makes people
lose their patience when talking to you on the list.

Anyway, having said all that it should be clear to you now that when
you read s with an underdot in transcriptions it could refer to any of
a variety of sounds.  The one thing the sounds all have in common
is that they are realized as emphatic, whether this means glottalized,
velarized, pharyngealized, oropharyngealized, or whatever other
technical term you use to describe it.  They are borrowed from one
language into the other (such as Akkadian or Egyptian into Hebrew)
as emphatic even though the realizations of emphatics are slightly
different in Akkadian and Egyptian (non Central Semitic languages)
than in Hebrew.  They are clearly differentiated from non-emphatic
letters.  They will not be confused.

This sums it up for the "First".

Second, Lameen clearly indicates that in Ugaritic "Tyre" was spelled
with an emphatic s.  In Ugaritic, the emphatics developed differently
than in Hebrew and Phoenician, so like he writes, we would expect
a different sound.  The spelling in Ugaritic possibly indicates that
the merge in Hebrew and Phoenician of the two emphatic Sade
sounds (the emphatic counterparts of [th] and [ts]) already took
place.

Now look here: http://www.jstor.org/pss/4132213
Woodhouse is using an underlined underdotted t to represent what
I call emphatic [th], and an underdotted s to represent what I call
emphatic [ts].  But this doesn't mean that either of us intends a
different pronunciation.  He just wants to distinguish them one
from the other.

Third, the word "cur" means mountain, or rock, or peak.  This is
what it always meant.  This is what Lameen's post is about.  The
original name and meaning had an emphatic letter in the beginning.
It was not originally "%ur".

To sum up, Egyptian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic, Phoenician,
Akkadian, and all kinds of various languages had emphatics.
There is no reason that one language would have confused or
borrowed an emphatic letter in another as a non-emphatic.
Moreover, the letters serve in the language in phonological
opposition to one another, so that the differences between
them are used to distinguish words.  Just like dome and
tome are two different words because the first consonant
is either voiced or voiceless, emphatic vs. non-emphatic
was also used to distinguish words in Semitic.  We have
Bronze Age spellings in Ugaritic and the Amarna
correspondence that shows us that emphatic s (underdot
s, or however it is represented) was used to spell the city's
name.  The city's name's etymology shows us that the
first consonant was emphatic.  So there is EVERY objective
reason why %WR could not have been the original spelling.

Lastly, look here:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew/2007-October/033717.html
in section 5b.  You already KNOW that Tyre is spelled in the
Amarna letters with the underdotted s.  Again, though, that's
just a writing convention.  Moran does not indicate that he
means a particular realization of the emphatic s.  He just
means it was an emphatic s that was kept distinct from non-
emphatic consonants like Shin or Sin.

Yitzhak Sapir