Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

The very title of this thread shows a misrepresentation of what James wrote.

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 7:12 AM, Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Does JamesC realize that his "no distinguished-vowel-perception
> proposal" is a proposal for a ONE VOWEL language?
>

That is NOT what he meant.

Taken in context, listing just the first letter of a syllable is usually
enough to recognize which vowel to include in the syllable. Therefore, the
inventor of the writing system thought it unnecessary to include the vowel
information.

But in order for this to work well, there needs to be a one-to-one
correspondence between the phoneme that initiates the syllable, and the
symbol used to record it. Therefore the conclusion that pre-Exile Hebrew had
only 22 consonants.

>
> … (Yes, ancient Semitic languages had closed syllables
> long before the Exile, but that is another thread.)
>

This is a linguistic fallacy. Just because some other Semitic languages had
closed syllables, does not mean that Hebrew had closed syllables. No more
than that just because most Altaic languages have closed syllables,
therefore Japanese, an Altaic language, has closed syllables (it didn’t).

>
> BRKT ('blessings' 'braxot')
> Randall
>
>
> --
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicalulpan.org
> randallbuth AT gmail.com
> Biblical Language Center
> Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
>
> Karl W. Randolph.