Subject: [b-hebrew] Matres Lectionis and critical analysis
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:33:38 -0400
>>JCR: Hi,
>>What do you think about the idea that matres
>>lectiones were considered to be consonants?
>>Maybe some people genuinely heard a 'Y' at
>>the end of a long 'I' and a 'W' at the end of
>>long 'U' or 'O'. I know I certainly do.
James, you didn't read all those books I gave you yet. This is
basically LA Bange's theory: /y/ and /w/ are "glides". A diphthong is
a vowel that shifts to a glide position mid-syllable. /y/ and /w/ are
also called "approximants" because when you make the sound you move
your tongue quickly toward the appropriate point of articulation but
don't actually touch it. The point of articulation for /y/ (usually
written /j/) is very close to the vowel /i/ while /w/ is very close
to /u/ (as in "who"). Thus in actual speech it is very common for /
uw/ --> /u/ and /iy/-->/i/ and vice-versa. If you hear /y/ and /w/ at
the end of your vowels within regular speech then your dialect tends
to "diphthongize" simple vowels (its not quite fair to check by
saying /i/ by itself since we have a tendency to move our tongue away
from the point of articulation before we stop the airflow, which will
naturally cause a glide).
Bange argues that Northwest Semitic orthography moved through three
stages. First was the fully consonantal stage in which /yod/ and /
waw/ were only written when they had full consonantal value (defined
as being followed by a vowel, ie they form a proper CV syllable). The
second stage is semi-consonantal orthography (10th – 7th centuries).
In this stage the spoken dialects "diphthongized" a certain number of
vowels so /aleph/, /he/, /yod/, and /waw/ became semi-consonants,
used often to indicate diphthongs after accented vowels in open
syllables. The /aleph/ functions as a glottal stop while the /he/ is
a glottal off-glide, the /waw/ is a labial off-glide, and the /yod/
is a palatal off-glide. Bange argues that true vowel-letters do not
appear until 6th century as the results of historical spellings when
the function of these letters as off-glides was lost and by analogy
they were used to mark simple vowels.