Biblical Hebrew Forum

[tedbro AT aol.com]

Yitzak:
 
I'm not familiar with the linguistic issues, but aren't there an  abundance 
of single sylabel word written in either CVC of CC  form? Several quickly 
come to mind; sus - horse, shem -  name, chag - circle, kol - all, dag - 
fish, etc. etc, etc. Does  the proposal of open syllable pre-exilic Hebrew 
apply 
only to  multisylable words? 
 
Ted Brownstein
In a message dated 1/21/2010 1:22:34 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com writes:

It has  been claimed that the evidence f

or "CVC"  Hebrew is only
post-exilic, when Aramaic influence spread.  However,  the
question is how one defines evidence.  Well, we've all been
in  the evidence discussions.  I just wanted to point out various
kinds of  evidence against this idea, that just happens to be
post-exilic.  Yes,  it is true that pre-exilic Hebrew does not
have vowels.  However,  whether Aramaic, Phoenician, Ugaritic,
or Hebrew, the orthography has an  interesting peculiarity.
That is, if the letter is doubled it is written  once.  Said another
way, if a letter has no vowel afterwards, and the  same letter
follows, it is written down only once.  In NWS languages,  another
factor is that n without a vowel assimilates to the  following
consonant, so that the doubling is again shown by only  one
letter.  Elements of this situation can be found in  pre-exilic
inscriptions.  For example:

Siloam: mn hmwc) vs.  mymn (doubling of y)
Lachish: #6 xy yhwh vs #3 xyhwh
Arad: Lachish #4  ntn (and elsewhere) vs Arad #2 wntt or
#40 nttm (doubling of the second t,  in each case)

In the first two examples above we can also  probably
conclude that mn and xy were single syllable words.

I'd  also point out the same situation exists in Moabite, with
wkrty (doubling  of t) from the root krt as in mkrtt, but I don't
consider Moabite a type of  Hebrew.

Yitzhak Sapir