Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Mohler <jonathan.mohler AT gmail.com>]

Hi Will,

To be honest I am using the term native speaker more broadly.  It is a current debate between theologians and linguists whether the science of modern linguistics can be applied to BH.  The main reason is that when a linguist studies a modern tongue, he/she has the luxury of filtering the data through a native speaker.  For example, native feedback allows the linguist to distinguish an allophone from a phoneme.  With BH we can't interview the Masoretes directly.  But I do believe that it is well established that they were preserving their tradition, that is, what they received as a long tradition of pronunciation.  In this light, the Masoretic pointing is a linguistic goldmine.

If they pointed the Heb text within an Aramaic framework, the text would show much more consistency.  Instead, morphological studies are showing that variation is mostly due to geographical/dialectical variation. See Gary A. Rendsburg's essay "Morphological Evidence for Regional Dialects in Ancient Hebrew" in Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew, edited by Walter R. Modine.

Jonathan Mohler

On Jan 9, 2013, at 8:09 PM, Will Parsons wrote:

On Tue, 8 Jan 2013 20:04:43 -0600, Jonathan Mohler <jonathan.mohler AT gmail.com> wrote:

I am simply describing what is happening at the abstract layer of

language.  I don't see this "mobile schwa" comment as relative. The

shortening of long vowel sounds to short vowel sounds and even

shewas is no different than what happens in English.  The only thing

that confuses people is that they misinterpret what the vowel

pointing system really is.  In a modern writing system that includes

consonants and vowels, most shewas would not be included in the

alphabet, nor would say the qamets-chatuf, as these would be

considered by linguists as "allophones" not "phonemes." The qamets,

the pathaq, the qamets-chatuf, and the chateph-pathaq would all be

represented by one signifier, the "a," because a native speaker

would not recognize them as separate vowels, just slight variations

of the same vowel.  This is what linguists call sounds (phones) that

are in "complementary distribution."

4. It is true that stress and theatrics may be achieved by

elongation.

Stress has nothing to do with theatrics. I am simply talking

Linguistics 101.  Stress is a product of a native speakers

unconscious instinct to formulate words according to discoverable

deep structure rules.  The Masoretes came up with a system that

would preserve what they heard as native speakers.

In general, I agree.  But, when you speak of the Masortes as being
"native speakers", just what do you mean by that?  What in fact *was*
the native language of those that pointed the Masoretic text?  It
probably wasn't Hebrew, which had most likely had died out as a
natively spoken language centuries before.  I *assume* it was Aramaic
(I'm open to correction on this), in which case the Masoretes would be
trying to represent the traditional pronunciation of the Hebrew text
within the framework of their native language, Aramaic.

--
William Parsons
μη φαινεσθαι, αλλ' ειναι.