Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kevin Riley <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>]

If you read the complete text of what I wrote, rather than Jim's 
condensed version, I wasn't saying that doubling was unique, but that 
lenition of the begadkepat letters was.  I suspect one reason why 
lenition does not occur (as far as we know) in the other languages is 
because they kept the fricatives from Proto-Semitic, and that would 
block any weakening of ptkbdg.  The only connection I made between 
doubling and lenition was that the dagesh used to indicate doubling 
could also indicate non-lenition in the cases where a single consonant 
was not lenited, possibly because length ceased to be phonemic.

Kevin Riley

On 28/10/2010 3:02 PM, Yigal Levin wrote:
> Jim,
>
> Both you and Kevin are wrong.
>
> The phenomenon of doubling ("gemination") consonants exists in all Semitic languages. 
> In those ancient Semitic languages that were written in Cuneiform, the doubling is visible when 
> the same consonant is written in two adjacent syllables (like shar-ru for "king"). In 
> alphabetic writing, the doubling is not visible, unless we use diacritics. In the case of 
> (biblical) Hebrew and (biblical) Aramaic, we have the Masoretic dagesh. In the case of Arabic, we 
> have the Shadda, which has the same function.
>
> So what Hebrew and Aramaic have in common is not the phenomenon of doubling, but rather 
> the fact that the texts that we read were "dotted" by the Masoretes.
>
> Yigal Levin
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org 
> [mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of JimStinehart AT aol.com
> Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2010 4:05 PM
> To: randallbuth AT gmail.com; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Dagesh
>
>
> Kevin Riley wrote:  “While the change  [--] … doubling the letter, placing
> a dagesh within it, or any other device one can think of… [--] is unique to
> Aramaic and Hebrew (or, at least, the marking of it is) among the Semitic
> languages, it is a process that is familiar to most linguists. There is no
> need for an external influence, especially for one that ceased to exist
> centuries before we have any evidence of lenition existing in Hebrew and 
> Aramaic.
> By natural, homegrown linguistic processes Hebrew and Aramaic came to have
> lenited and unlenited consonants.”
>
> Something seems seriously askew here.
>
> 1.  Early Biblical Hebrew was born in the heart of beloved Canaan.
> Aramaic, by sharp contrast, was born way out in eastern Syria.  Why, then, 
> would
> Hebrew and Aramaic be the only Semitic languages that have the dagesh
> phenomenon of doubled consonants?  What is the common denominator between 
> Hebrew and
> Aramaic, which does not extend to the other Semitic languages?  Could that
> unique common denominator be the presence and influence of Hurrian at the
> birth of each of early Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, a presence that did not
> apply to the birth of the other Semitic languages?  I view the first Hebrews
> as living in the mid-14th century BCE, which is precisely the time of the
> short-lived dominance of many cities in Canaan by Hurrian princelings.  
> Aramaic
> was obviously born in the Hurrian heartland.
>
>
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