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  • From: Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>
  • To: "Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] dagesh in hebrew
  • Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 21:53:28 -0400

1. "Akkadian" is a reconstructed language for which we have no means of independently appraising the veracity of the claims made about it, and we should, methinks, leave it out here.

2. "proto-semitic" is a polite way of saying long, long ago.

2. The dagesh, in $IBER, is, in my opinion, an ancient cue for the xirik under the letter $, and nothing more. Upon the introduction of the NIKUD the dagesh became redundant, yet the NAKDANIYM left it in place out of respect for its antiquity, and so it is left there to bewilder us as to its purpose.

3. There is no "gemination" today, and there is no evidence that it ever existed in Hebrew. The Hebrew language functions perfectly well without it. I don't believe that a dot was inserted into a Hebrew letter to instruct the reader to double it in his mouth. For what?

4. A missing expected dagesh means, methinks, that the NAKDANIYM deviated from the reading of the DAG$ANIYM before them, for instance, BI$TIY of Lev. 13:48, that may not have had a xirik under the letter B at the time of the DAG$ANIYM. The subterfuge of a "floating", schwa invented to explain away this anomaly is as silly as that of the schwa "NA", and schwa "NAX".

4. I would not trust too much the books on "canaanite".

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Apr 23, 2011, at 10:41 AM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. wrote:

dear isaac,

as a non-specialist i made a small search on the
internet and found some material
on the phenomenon called gemination which includes all the
dgeshim in all the languages. there is fascinating stuff on
the development of gemination in akkadian and later in other
semitic languages.

just a small example: in tigrinya, SEBERE is (as expected) to break.
the repetitive form of SEBERE is SEBABERE, repeating the B twice.
the closest in hebrew would be the piel: $YBR with (yes) dagesh.
so, dagesh is indeed related to doubling and undoubling of consonants,
that is, unless you reject all extra-hebrew ties.

this is connected with the D-stem gemination in semitic which is
documented already in akkadian.

conjecture: in proto-semitic repetition was expressed by repeating the word:
$BR-$BR. by assimilation, this was shortened to SB-BR, then a clever person
invented the dagesh.

it seems that the dagesh in hebrew was originally used for BGD-KFT only,
where it is really absoluely necessary. then later diverted for other uses
(gemination).

gemination in canaanite would make it even more natural to accept its
existence in biblical hebrew. unfortunately i did not find easy access to
written material on canaanite, except for some video tapes on the verb
system. but i am sure canaanite also had geminaion and D-stem.

Rainey wrote some books on canaanite, and so did NJC Kouwenberg
and E Lipinski. these last two books are available (in mutilated
but usable form) on the internet.

maybe a specialist on the b-hebrew can explain the issue further.

nir cohen

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