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  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>, "Donald R. Vance, Ph.D." <donaldrvance AT mac.com>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Simple Pronunciation Question...
  • Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2010 11:46:51 +0100


From: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>


The fact that Hebrew uses one grapheme for two sounds demonstrates that
they didn't create the alphabet (why make one sign do double duty when
you're creating the thing?): sin and shin use the same grapheme.


Is this not a late development that postdates the Babylonian Exile? I see
reasons to doubt the dual duty. The same with all the other dual duty
graphemes of the Masoretic tradition.
***

In all cases the language must have had lateralized phonemes,
just like the other North-Western Semitic languages did.

A.
***




In fact, there may be others. Dalet for both daleth and dhalet if the
dhalet phoneme was still present in earlier Hebrew and others. There were
around 30 proto-Semitic phonemes and only 22 Hebrew graphemes. How many
survived into Hebrew is a matter of some debate and for how long. It is most
probable, most would say certain, that the Hebrews did not invent their
writing system.


Indications are that when Moses wrote Genesis, that he utilized older
documents.
***

????

What indications??

This is the first time I read that Moses, whose existence is not even certain, wrote Genesis...

A.
***



What was the script that they were written in? Did Moses
translate them to the Hebrew of his day? Did he merely update the language
to the Hebrew of his day? Did he need to do linguistic editing?

As for inventing their writing system, this was a time that when an alphabet
was adopted from another language, that letters were freely dropped and
added to make the alphabet fit the new language. Look at how both Latin and
Greek dropped and added letters.

As for Proto-Semitic, until ancient writing showing that language is found,
is an artificial language based on theory. Is that theory accurate?
***

The comparative method has been "proved" by Anatolian PIE which has the expected laryngeals.

Its validity has also been proved by Bloomfield who ultimately found in other Algonkian languages the proto-phonemes he had hypothesized.

In general, I noticed that people who start rejecting the comparative method have some absurd crap to sell.
This method is not just a great scientific achievement, more modestly it's a very efficient crapbuster.

Arnaud Fournet





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