Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Garth Grenache <garthgrenache AT hotmail.com>]

>>Would you like me to give Blau's explanation for how ultimate stress became 
>>in Hebrew?
Isaac Friend>What is it?

Blau suggests four stages of stress from ProtoHebrew/ProtoSemitic to Hebrew:

i. Perhaps second-last syllable (penult) is stressed in words containing only 
short vowels; otherwise the last long vowel was stressed, which was often 
also the penult. 
ii. General penultimate stress. 
iii. Loss of final short vowels in most verbs and nouns leaves the stress on 
last syllable (ultima). 
iv. Some words with penultimate stress which retained long final vowels, had 
their stress also moved to the ultima, e.g. sha:-mA-ra:->sha:-ma-rA: -> 
sha:me-rA:  (pausal retains original vowel and its penultimate accent 
shamA:ra: because it was lengthened in pause)


Garth Grenache, Australia