Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>]

It is possible that the patax and the qamats were intended to  
represent different sounds, but also possibly not, I don't know. If  
you have any good argument for a possibly different vocalization  
bring it and we will listen to it.
I am afraid that the Hebrew "short" and "long" vowels (which are in  
any event nonexistent now) is a figment of the imagination, as is  
"Proto-Semitic".
One thing I am convinced of, which is that the claim that xataf-patax  
is a "semi-vowel" (which no one to my knowledge pronounces as such)  
is a terminological farce resulting from a silly interpretation of  
the word xataf.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Jan 18, 2011, at 7:40 PM, Uri Hurwitz wrote:

>      If you'd taken the slightest trouble, you'd
>  have found out that whoever vocalized the consonantal
>  text, heard distinctly two different 'A' vowels.
>     Correspondingly they were given different markers.
>  One was a Qamatz, another a Patach, and related to
>  the last, a semi-vowel hataf-patach. There is no point
>  in explicating the differences bweteen long and short
>  vowels here. For one thing,  Proto-Semitic may raise
>  its ugly head. Just dust off your old elementary
>  grammer books.