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  • From: Kevin Riley <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Dagesh
  • Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:44:04 +1100

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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