From: David Steinberg <david.l.steinberg AT rogers.com>
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [b-hebrew] Stress Lengthening of vowels in Pre-Exilic Hebrew
Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 15:44:15 -0400
Dr Sapir -
Thanks for your response.
Re stress in Canaanite languages. I agree that our only strong evidence
is from Hebrew. However, the situation in spoken Arabic seems to me to
be that short vowels often disappear when unstressed and long vowels
often, and in Egyptian always, shorten when unstressed while stressed
short vowels do not generally lengthen. In Aramaic, it would seem that
short stressed short vowels do not generally lengthen. These patterns
contrast with biblical Hebrew, as reflected in the Tiberian tradition
where all stressed vowels are long.