Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Paul Zellmer" <pzellmer AT sc.rr.com>]

Why tri-phonemic?  Because the written text is a descriptive representation 
of the vocalization of the oral text, and analysis has indicated that the 
language used trilateral roots.

For Isaac’s proposal, which you seem to be wanting to adopt, to be a true 
description of the development, the forebears of the Hebrews would have had 
to thrown out all their previous spoken communication forms and started 
building the language from scratch.  Even if they had done this, the language 
that they started with would not have been Hebrew—it would have been 
something that eventually developed into Hebrew.  It is an interesting 
proposal and may shed some light on why some roots are related.  It also 
would appear to make Hebrew (and the other Semitic languages?) unique, as I 
have never seen anyone propose such a correlation between phonemes and 
meaning for other language families.  But it is *not* describing the language 
that we know as Hebrew, it is describing a forebear to Hebrew.  Again, the 
language that we know as Hebrew has triliteral roots.

As for your reconstitution statement, the core words were not changed.  
Grammar was, adopting more of an Indo-European flavor, but the base 
vocabulary remained.  Did pronunciation differ from the original?  Perhaps, 
but that would be in the vowels and perhaps idiomatic pronunciation of 
certain consonants.  Nothing occurred that would have changed the number of 
letter/consonantal phonemes in the roots.

Paul Zellmer

 

From: fred burlingame [mailto:tensorpath AT gmail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 12:40 AM
To: Paul Zellmer
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] language level

 

Hello Paul;

 

I am no stranger to confusion, from time to time.

 

I think you make a good point. The spoken language preceded the written 
language. Hence, the former instructed the development & expression of the 
latter in alphabet form.

 

My original post however, dealt only with the written form of the language.

 

I am also not sure why the spoken language would require three base phonemes 
for a verb. Why could not a verb root enjoy both:

 

a. a single written letter; and

 

b.  a single vocalized phoneme or sound?

 

Your point also seems to dovetail with Isaac's comments concerning the strong 
relationships amongst hebrew words via its common root(s).

 

And again, I am no expert ....; but when the hebrew language was 
reconstituted in 19th century, did not the written language come first? So, 
perhaps to suggest that vocalization always and in every instance precedes 
the written expression, may not be accurate. Symbiosis may exist between the 
two expressions.

 

regards,

 

fred burlingame