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  • From: Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>
  • To: Vadim Cherny <vadimcherny AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew List <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Inseparable Prepositions and that shewa
  • Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 08:23:02 -0400


I will reiterate my opinion that:
1. There is no schwa "NA" and no schwa "NACH". The NAKDANIM (which were possibly QARAIM, but are elevated now, to coverup their doubtful origin, to the status of "Masorates") possibly followed a minimalist pronunciation tradition, and in order to avoid the creeping back of spurned vowels filled the vacant location under the letter by a schwa. Now some people cunningly bring back some of these vowels by the tricky subterfuge of the invented "semi-vowels" of the schwa "NA".
2. In reading the TNK I strive not "move" any schwa except in the B Q L prepositions. Hebrew sounds to me very good and very right this way.
3. It is customary in spoken Hebrew to "move" the schwa under the B Q L prepositions and make them sound BE, QE, LE, as though they were separate words. To this I agree.
4. A schwa "NACH" is merely a schwa under a letter that should have carried a dagesh XAZAQ. In case of BGDQPT it is moved forward to become a dagesh QAL.

Isaac Fried, Boston University
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Inseparable Prepositions and that shewa
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Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

>Ben Asher and Saadia did not live "three or four centuries after the Masoretes
>introduced their notation." The Masoretes were not a single group of people
>who in one day introduced a whole new notation and then left the scene.

Had not dagesh marks appeared centuries before Saadia, who would thus be expected to explain rather than challenge them?


The Masoretic tradition has dagesh kal even in Aramaic texts - do you
seriously believe that every other Aramaic author was wrong in
omitting them (as far as I know)?

>Well, that depends. Which Aramaic author or authors did you have
>in mind that omitted them in vocalized texts?

No doubt, your linguistic knowledge vastly exceeds mine. Still, I won't recall a single Aramaic text which supports dagesh kal in, say, word-initial position.

>Vocalized Aramaic texts in the Hebrew tradition (such as Onqelos) also
>have dagesh qal. Even Syriac has qu$$aya and rukkakha to mark the
>differences.

Or, perhaps, Onkelos was dageshed well later? We don't have its early manuscripts. I have no information about Syriac.

>Or did you simply make a claim about
>"every other Aramaic author" just like you make up vocalizations of
>non-existent words in the Bible?

Why not stop beating a dead horse? I used binchem example the way qtalchem is used.

>The DSS does not have "dvarac." The DSS has final -kh and -th leading
>scholars to believe the pronunciation was -ka.

But DSS also have final hey in otem -@tmh, so final hey in 2ms is likely a similar epenthetic sound.
It is still more clear in Secunda: tovac for tovcha.
If you would argue that Greek X was ch, then you would have to explain LXX's Xalannia for Calneh.

>Similarly, neither the Secunda nor the LXX (to which the Masoretes did
>have access), allow us to distinguish fricative from plosive pronunciations
>since the Greek writing system did not distinguish fricative and aspirated
>letters.

Why not? tav is theta rather than tau, caf is chi rather than kappa in Secunda.

>The pronunciations in the Secunda feature the drop of the last vowel in
>the suffixed pronouns. They show a development similar to Aramaic where
>the last vowel that was lost displaced the original case vowel - malkuka
>"your king (nominative)" -> malkak.

Might it be very different? It is one thing to drop a final vowel after an open syllable (malkuka), and quite another - after a closed syllable (dvarcha). There must be a reason for vulgar epenthesis in dvar(e)cha but not in catavta, and the only such reason is semantic: verbs and nouns received different intonational accent.

>No, we can't. The dagesh is not "an attempt at resyllabification." The
>dagesh is present in -tem because historically there was never any
>vowel separating -tem and the root. It is not present in -khem
>because nouns had a case vowel and verbs had a vowel following most
>nominative suffixes (-ti: in katavti:, -ta in katavta, etc.)

You really believe that the Masoretes wrote a diachronic grammar, reflecting the case vowel lost perhaps a thousand years before them?

Vadim Cherny




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