Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 2010/2/24 Charles Grebe wrote:
> תודה רבה  Randall,
> This is helpful. Page 53-4 of Jouon-Muraoka discuss this "shewa medium" if 
> anyone else wants to read about it.
> http://books.google.ca/books?id=Zhjd_m5hIeIC&lpg=PA52&vq=shewa&dq=Jouon%20Muraoka&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q=shewa&f=false
>
> It's interesting that I've read malkai מלְכֵי, ethxem אתְכֶם, etc. for 
> years and never noticed that it violated the shewa rule I learned in first 
> year Hebrew! :)
>
> Charles Grebe
> Briercrest College and Seminary
> Sask, Canada

Hello Charles,

I think the best answer to your original question is that what we have
is the interplay between various
historical changes in Hebrew phonology.

First, we have a rule that all bgdkpt letters following a vowel are
spirantized.  According to this,
baraka -> baraxa
barakath -> baraxath
barakathi -> baraxathi

However, at some point this rule stopped being active.  Thus, a form
like baraxati: could lose
the vowel and the kaf would remain spirantized:
barakathi -> baraxathi -> barxathi

In contrast, the kaf in the form barakat -> baraxat evidently did not
remain spirantized.  Why?
It must have lost the vowel while the rule was still active:
barakath -> baraxath -> barkath

So the question now has to be, why is it that the vowel was lost in
barakath earlier and in
barakathi later?  I think it has to do with stress and vowel length.
In all the above forms, stress
is on the last syllable.  But in baraxa and baraxathi we have long vowels:
*bara:xa:
*baraxa:thi:
Basically it is assumed that stress (') was originally on the
penultimate syllable, ra: and xa:
respectively, and that syllable lengthened under stress.  Later the
stress shifted to the
last syllable giving:
bara:'xa:
bara'xath
baraxa:'thi:

Now, in this situation, in the last two forms we have two short open
syllables side by side: bara-
However, in the last form, these two syllables are separated from the
main stress by an
intervening (long) vowel, xa:.

In Tiberian Hebrew, two short open vowels are disallowed.  But it
appears that the second case,
where the two short open vowels come immediately before the stress
were disallowed first,
while the last form where those open vowels were separated by another
vowel were still allowed.
Because the two short open vowels were disallowed, the second was deleted:
bara'xath > bar'xath.

The same happened with baraxa:'thi, only later: baraxa:'thi: > barxa:'thi:.

What could have allowed the third form to remain longer?  It appears
to me to be secondary
stress (,).  In Tiberian Hebrew, secondary stress falls on an open
syllable separated from the
main stress by a buffer syllable, or on a long vowel which is
separated from the main stress
by a schewa.  In Tiberian Hebrew, all such secondarily stressed
syllables are long.  The rule
we have is similar except there is no requirement of length.  In
baraxa:'thi:, the two short open
syllables are separated from the main stress by another long vowel.
So the second can take
secondary stress: ba,raxa:'thi:.  In baraxath, the secondary stress
can fall only on ba-: ,bara'xath.
So it appears that in the earlier rule, if two short open vowels came
side by side, and the
second was unstressed, that situation could not be accomodated, and
that vowel was lost:
,bara'xath > barkath

Then the spirantization rule stopped being active.

Then, the secondary stress could not retain itself on the short vowel,
and that vowel being
now unstressed and second of two short open vowels was lost:
ba'raxa:thi: > barxa:thi:
Except this time, without the spirantization rule active, the kaf
remained spirantized.

Along the way we also have changes of vowel quality - long a: > long
qamats @:, short a > i,
so we end up with:
bar@:-'x@:
bir-'ka:th
bir-x@:-'thi:

There's a lot here that is my personal opinion, it's the best I have,
after consulting all kinds
of various sources I have.  I think that even if the details of the
developments are wrong,
the basic idea would stand: it is an interplay of secondary stress
between the time that
spirantization was active and the time that it was not.

Yitzhak Sapir