Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

Hi,

Quoting Petr Tomasek <tomasek AT etf.cuni.cz>:

> > Whatever the consensus might be (and I do not agree with Kevin
> > Riley), there is still a general problem with dageshes and single
> > points in the middle of letters at all, i.e. including dagesh lene/
> > forte, Shureq and Mappiq:
>
> Why do You think, they all present the same linguistic/textual phenomene?
>
> I'd rather see the dagesh as remnant of the "diacritic point" (see
> e.g. in syriac the oldest text had only those "diacritic points"
> and all the punctuation developed from it).
>
> Even in tiberian masoretic texts the dagesh clearly has several
> distinct functions:
>  - dagesh lene
>  - dagesh forte
>  - mapiq
>  - discernive dagesh
>  - dehiq/ate merahiq (=conjuctive dagesh?)
>  - shuruq/ḥolem
>
> In BP a dagesh is sometimes even used to distinguish between holy
> and profane usage of the word EL ("god" versus "God"), i.e. it
> hardly can be connected with any phonetic feature.

Now this has to be about the most sensible comment I've read all day.  
Rather than being an unambiguous aid to pronunciation here we are  
talking about an all purpose marker used to bring the reader's  
attention to something or to remind the copyist of how something  
should be understood. While the dagesh is really a spot it is perhaps  
better understood as the X that marks the spot than the spot that  
marks the X.

James Christian




> > Simply, a point in the middle of a consonant denotes forced,
> > amplified or accelerated pronounciation of that consonant. Depending
> > on A. kind of consonant, and B. phonemic environment, and maybe C.
> > syntactical environment, this amplification has different effects,
> > which we are familiar with by the wellknown dageshing rules, Shureq(-
> > u) pronounciation of Waw, or viceless laryngal of final He (which is
> > the rule at the beginning and middle of a word).
> >
> > Thus, yes:
> > > - presumably, dagesh always means the same thing, whether a change of
> > > aspiration or a new sound (sibilant?)
> >
> > but with different effects, depending on … (see above).
> >
> > And this:
> > > - in some environments (yeshobhebh), the aspirated versions are nearly
> > > unpronounceable.
> >
> > By no means it is. At least not for a German native speaker ;-)
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > Dr. Reinhard G. Lehmann
> > Academic Director
> > Research Unit on Ancient Hebrew & Epigraphy
> > FB 01/ Faculty of Protestant Theology
> > Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz
> > D-55099 Mainz
> > Germany
> > lehmann AT uni-mainz.de
> > http://www.hebraistik.uni-mainz.de
> > http://www.ev.theologie.uni-mainz.de/297.php
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
> --
> Petr Tomasek <http://www.etf.cuni.cz/~tomasek>
> Jabber: butrus AT jabbim.cz
> SIP: butrus AT ekiga.net
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