Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Joel C. Salomon" <joelcsalomon AT gmail.com>]

On 1/20/2010 6:07 AM, James Christian wrote:
> The answers to these questions can largely be answered by considering what
> the ancients who developed this alphabet considered to be the reusable
> phonetic unit. They evidently considered the syllable to be the reusable
> phonetic unit and grouped 'allosyllables' into one reusable symbol. That is
> to say that syllables ba be bi bo etc were all represented by the house
> logograph. There are pros and cons to this system.The con is the level of
> ambiguity it introduces. The pro is the increased reusability with a reduced
> graph set.
<snip>
> And so it is this sequence of logic which leads many people to the intuitive
> conclusion that Hebrew (or whatever it evolved from) was originally a CV
> language.

The counter-argument runs very similarly:

“That is to say that syllables ba be bi bo etc., _as well as the
consonant b_, were all represented by the house logograph.”

—Joel C. Salomon