Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>]

isaac,

you do not have to summarize your theory - you have done so so many times 
before. but endless repetition does not prove it is correct. however, each 
time somebody tries to pursue an idea 
which includes the words PLENE or FORTE we fall on the same stumbling block 
just because you
do not approve.

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your version is a one-upon-a-time fairy tale with no scientific backup.

1) you say that dagesh preceded niqud: is there evidence of any early hebrew 
text with dagesh but without niqud? we are speaking of a span of some 1000 
years or more!

2) BGDKPT:  hardening GDT in beginning of syllable would be hardly acceptable 
by any serious linguist. as to hardening BKP: it seems unlikely to me that 
BAYIT or BWR or BEN or BAT or BIB or BAR or BLY (or the phoneme B- in 
general)  had ever been soft. and so are the K in KY, KAF or KOKAB, PAR or 
PARAH. although you might dismiss this as irrelevant, many of these words go 
back to akkadian (and many other non-alphabetic semitic texts) where their 
pronounciation is pretty much known.

the common logic of linguistics is usually inverted (i.e. softening): P 
becomes F, B becomes V, K becomes Kh etc. this is attested in many languages 
(i think it is called Grim's law). why would hebrew be the only exception?
curiously, arabic chose hard B, soft F and K appears as both soft and hard.

3) although you want us to believe that dagesh preceded niqud, you also want 
us to believe that it was only used before patax, xiriq and qubuc, before 
these formally existsd.

4) of course i agree that masoretes added a dagesh when Y was omitted, as in 
BA-CINWR and did not add it when Y was present, as in HACYNOQ. here, they 
were bound by the inconsistencies of BH niqud-less spelling: KTIV MALE/XASER. 
observe, though, 
that this inconsistencyimplied (in their logic) changes in both dagesh and 
niqud, so that the theory that dagesh and nyqud were formally introduced at 
the same time, and probably by the same people, seems more likely than yours.

5) as to the original BH spelling (ShYLMU vs ShYLEMU), your guess is as good 
as any. of course you would not put any stress
on the L, but you will have hard time proving us that such a stress did not 
exist. the dagesh, on the other hand, MIGHT
hint that it did exist, if we assume that it did reflect some truly hebrew 
characteristic.

6) the idea that the dagesh came from the dot which separated words is, i 
believe, an anachronism. i suspect that the 
separating dot disappeared from semitic texts LONG LONG before the dagesh was 
canonized.

nir cohen

On Sun, 13 May 2012 19:04:10 -0400, Isaac Fried wrote
> I will summarize my thinking about the dagesh 
> 
> 1. Once upon a time, long before the invention of the NIKUD the first 
> letter of every written Hebrew word was marked by a dot. With time, Hebrew 
> readers got into the habit of instinctively, as we do today, hardening the 
> BGDKPT letters upon the sight of an internal dot. As the writing techniques 
> improved, this initial dot was abandoned, except in the BGDKPT letters. 
> This left us with the silly legacy of some MBIYNIM (as per instruction of 
> the Hebrew "Academy") reading -KALAH, 'bride' as -XALAH, and other same 
> such droll readings. 
> 
> 2. Once upon a time, long before the invention of the NIKUD a dot was 
> introduced into a letter following a present day patax, xiriq, and qubuc, 
> to serve as a, pre-nikud, reading cue. The dot is not needed in plene 
> writing, where Y and W serve a similar purpose. Hence בַּצִּנּוֹר BA-CINOR 
> of 2Sam. 5:8 is with a dot in the letter N, while הַצִּינֹק HA-CIYNOK of 
> Jer. 29:26 is with no dot in the letter N. 
> 
> 3. In case the patax, xiriq, or qubuc are followed by a letter with (as we 
> mark it today) a schwa, the dot is relegated to the next letter. At first, 
> this shift was done to (nearly) all letters, but later on, also this dot 
> was abandoned, except in the BGDKPT letters.
> 
> 4. If the canonical dagesh rules are forfeited, it means that the extant 
> spelling is changed, or that the NAKDANIM deliberately overruled the old 
> reading implied by the dagesh. I would not exclude the possibility, for 
> instance, that the form שִלְּמוּ $ILMU was originally שִׁלֵּמוּ $ILEMU, as 
> in Ish. 19:21, and hence the dagesh in the letter L.
> 
> 5. Otherwise, the dagesh has nothing to do with open or closed syllables, 
> with "missing" consonants, with the "doubling" of consonants, etc..
>