Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>]

Hi Jonathan,

On Tue, 15 Jan 2013 21:40:12 -0600, Jonathan Mohler 
<jonathan.mohler AT gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I'm not disputing that they were preseving an oral tradition of
pronunciation, but whether we need to see their representation of that
tradition within the phonological framework of another language,
Aramaic.

> If they pointed the Heb text within an Aramaic framework, the text
> would show much more consistency.

I don't see why.  If the tradition was sometimes contradictory to
itself, that would be reflected in the incosistency of the Masoretic
pointings.  The point is, the Masoretes had to have *some* context for
representing the traditional pronunciation, and if not Aramaic, what
then?

> 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.

Are you saying that ancient geographical/dialectical variation is
reflected in the Masoretic pointing?  Or variation at the time the
Masoretes were active?  I probably don't have ready access to
Prof. Rendsburg's essay, but if its subject is *ancient* Hebrew
dialectical variation as the title implies, I'm not sure how relevant
it would be to the details of the Masoretic rendering of Hebrew
pronuncation in the Middle Ages.

-- 
Will Parsons