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  • From: "Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] isaac dagesh, no. 378
  • Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 17:54:04 -0200

> Is it conceivable that the "masorates" would disfigure the sacred
> text itself to mark something that is only questionably there, or
> that naturally articulates itself?

isaac,

your question was a bit ambiguous, ralf answered about the verb form,
i complete on the dagesh.

all your implicit assumptions are either wrong or conjectural.

1. your conjecture that, for the masoretes, putting a dot inside a
letter meant disfiguration of the sacred, has no support.

2. quite to the contrary, by the fact that they did put this dot
there you can conclude that they did NOT consider this as disfiguring.

3. moreover, the dagesh does not touch the letter - they remain
disconnected. so, geometrically speaking, there is no disfiguring
whatsoever.

4. but in fact the masoretes and even the talmudists did disfigure the
letters
much more than this: for example, added to them "ctarim" etc.
they even changed the alfabet from hebrew to aramaic!!!!!!!!!!!
CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT?? the SACRED script! so, what is "sacred" or
not is subject to much debate.

5. the argument that gemination was, to the masoretes, "questionable"
is meaningless: it may be "questionable" only to us. as
to the masoretes, there are only two possible hypotheses: either
gemination was there at their time, or not. in case it was there,
it would indeed make sense if the masoretes denoted it and call it
"DAGESH", as they did. now, since neither you nor me know for
sure that gemination existed, or not, i have the right to speculate
as much as you. and so do all the others b-henrew members, especially
as gemination is a typical semitic phenomenon, and appears always
IN THE SAME PLACES. now, if as you say gemination was not a feature of hebrew
in masoretic time, then indeed i would be asking what this funny dot
is doing there.

6. equally absurd is the opinion that gemination, assuming it existed,
was "naturally articulated". if indeed gemination existed, it was
articulated in some letters and not in others. so, it required
notation - a DAGESH.

7. the dagesh qal is very similar. equally denoted by a dot, it
equally "disfigures" the letter to express some difference which
clearly existed in THEIR time, if not much earlier.
say B vs V, K vs Kh. that it evidently marks phonological difference
is at least partly evident from the greek and latin translations,
e.g. PALESTINA and not FALESTINA. JOSEPH and not JOSEP. as to (ABRAM,
ABEL the problem is in the greek!) so, SOME letters required dagesh qal,
others did not. and so a dot was invented.

8. in fact, masorah-wise there are not two types of dagesh, just one.
it seems that masorah put the dagesh whenever they observed a
binary phonological change. then, at some point, invented a
grammatical rule which simplified the empiric evidence. but in
this respect, the masoretes were no different than any grammarians:
observation, deduction, simplification. so, at some point i guess that
they discovered that dagesh sometimes meant dislabialization,
sometimes gemination. then invented the syllable law etc etc.

9. observe that the niqud was invented in several different places at
once, and with only minimal differences between them.

nir cohen






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