Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Garth Grenache <garthgrenache AT hotmail.com>]

Peace, Karl:

I am not familiar with Mishnaic Hebrew.

It is from ProtoSemitic/ProtoHebrew to the Tiberian vocalised Biblical Hebrew 
that Blau is showing development.

It is said that Stage iii probably reflects Hebrew from about 1000 B.C.E.

I reckon Stage iv is probably a development in the Tiberian tradition of 
pronunciation, medieval.

Garth Grenache,
Australia.

Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2010 08:30:14 -0700
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Blau's explanation for how ultimate stress became in  
  Hebrew
From: kwrandolph AT gmail.com
To: garthgrenache AT hotmail.com
CC: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Garth:
This sounds like the pattern of linguistic change from Biblical Hebrew to 
Mishnaic Hebrew, or pretty close to that pattern. Doesn’t it sound like that 
to you, too?
Karl W. Randolph.


On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 8:22 AM, Garth Grenache <garthgrenache AT hotmail.com> 
wrote:



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