Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Dagesh

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: "Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>, <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Dagesh
  • Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 08:46:59 +0200


----- Original Message ----- From: "Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 7:52 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Dagesh


Perhaps the structure of Hebrew and Aramaic explains why we have a distinction between unlenited double letters and lenited single letters. Both Aramaic and Hebrew seem to have lost the fricative forms of gdtk, (and didn't have pb) which would allow those consonants to weaken to fricatives. The other languages retained the fricatives and so lenition was less likely. I still think it is somewhat odd if it is due to Hurrian influence that it is almost 1000 years before we see evidence of this. Should it not have been more evident closer to Hurrian times?

Kevin Riley
***

Anyway the list is constantly going off track with "Hurrian". None of this makes any sense. I suppose most of you are aware of that.

Hurrian was spoken in the mountains and hills of Northern Mesopotamia. It's obvious from all the Sumero-Akkadianisms that the cultural influence is unilaterally from the south to the north.
It happens that Hurrian people have exerted a short-lived power thanks to the temporary military superiority brought in by Indo-Iranians, who had domesticated horses and trained them for war.

It just does not make any sense that Hurrian could ever have had any influence on Semitic languages, spoken in areas where there probably never lived any Hurrian speakers and even fewer Hurro-Semitic bilinguals. The idea suggested by Bush of a Hurrian influence on Hebrew is nothing but an idiosyncratic and unsupported fancy, which does not even fit the reality of Hurrian in the first place. This fancy seems to have been proposed in order to justify a number of unsupported claims about Hurrian. In my opinion it's nothing but a smoke screen.

Would it be possible to get rid of all this absurd and constant Hurrianesquery and let Hurrian rest in peace?

Arnaud Fournet
***








Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page