Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

>     Randall, there is a good reason why the term "Ta
 Marbut(.)a" is used - it literally means a 'tied Ta', as
 if the the two edges of the mostly flat Ta got tied
 together.

I like that. I had just pictured it as joining a noun to an optional
case ending. It could explain why the ta marbutta is a sign
for silence when the 't' is not pronounced, because it's not a 'h'.
An interesting extension is that
the sign for silence 'sukun' looks like a little 'ha', just like
the hamza sign for glottal stop looks like a little `ayin
(a voiced pharyngeal fricative).

On the other hand, if one thinks of the dots as secondary, it
would mean that 'h' was written for the missing/pausal 't'. I
haven't looked at the early Arabic manuscripts much. Just
enough to know that it requires special study. (It's a shame
that all those early Quranic manuscripts were destroyed in that
bombed German museum in WW2.)

and 'ta marbuTTa' is a bit far from a better concordance.

braxot
Randall






-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
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