8 January 2012
Biblical Hebrew Poetry and Word Play
Reconstructing
the Original Oral[1],
Aural[2] and
Visual Experience
By David Steinberg
David.Steinberg@houseofdavid.ca
Home page http://www.houseofdavid.ca/
Nb. Words Significantly Different in
Pronunciation in EBHP
תֵּיקוּ Tequ - Questions that Cannot be Resolved at Present[3]
|
N.b. This section deals with issues likely to remain
unresolved unless new evidence is unearthed. Some of the issues could be
resolved by the discovery more inscriptions similar to the Siloam Inscription, the Lachish
ostraca or the Arad
ostraca. More progress, regarding vocalization, could be made if more
Israelite or Judean names turn up in cuneiform texts. Many other questions, especially
concerning vocalization, could only be solved by the improbable find of eg. a transcription, into Babylonian
or Assyrian cuneiform, of a night of Hebrew poetry reading at the pre-exilic
Jerusalem court[4]. Wherever possible, I link back, from relevant elements in the
transcription, to the discussion in this section. Note, in reconstructed [EBHP] transliterations and sound
files
- 1.there is no spirantization of the bgdkpt consonants; 2.
.vowel qualities
are outlined here; 3. I
use the most probable form. Where no one form
stands out as most probable, I select the one closest to the MT vocalization. 4. when multiple forms are possible, the form used is underlined. |
I. Aim
1. Issues Arising from the full or Partial
Loss of Final short vowels in the Late Second or Early First Millennium B.C.E.
a) Did Word-Final
Short Vowels Exist in EBHP and Were All Word-Final Vowels Marked by Vowel
Letters?
c) Were Word and Syllable final Glottal Stops Pronounced in EBHP?
e) Were Word-Final Geminated Consonants
Maintained in EBHP?
2. Aramaic and Arabic as Guides to Reconstructing EBHP
4. Aramaic as a Litmus Test to Separate Pre and
Post-Exilic Changes in Biblical Hebrew
b) Segolates (m.p.) Hebrew Form vs. Aramaic
c) Noun
having Long Vowel followed by Short Vowel
d) Second Person Masculine
Singular Suffix on Singular Noun
e) Second Person Feminine Singular
Suffix on Singular Noun
f)
Second Person Feminine Singular Nominative Independent
Pronoun
g) Third Person
Feminine Singular Pronominal Suffix on Singular Noun
h) Third Person Masculine Plural Pronominal Suffix on Singular
Noun
i)
Characteristic Vowel of the hithpael
j)
Ending
of Suffix Conjugation 3fs of III-y
Verbs
k) Stress Patterns
of PC (2fs., 2mp., 3mp) and SC (3fs.,
3cp)
l) Philippi's Law (/i/ in a closed stressed syllable changes
to /a/)
l1) Suffix Conjugation peal (Aramaic)/qal
(Hebrew) with primitive characteristic
vowel-i
l2) Suffix Conjugation peal (Aramaic)/qal (Hebrew) of root MWT
l3) Suffix
Conjugation pa'el (Aramaic)/pi'el (Hebrew)
l4) Suffix
Conjugation aphel (Aramaic)/hiphil (Hebrew)
l5) Suffix
Conjugation Quality of First Vowel pa'el (Aramaic)/pi'el (Hebrew)
l6) Nominative Independent Pronoun (2 f.s.) and Suffix
Conjugation (2 f.s.)
m) Law of Attenuation (*Qatqat > Qitqat - /a/ in a closed, but unstressed syllable
changes to /i/ )
m1) Aramaic
and Hebrew */yaqˈṭul/ > */yiqˈṭul/
m2) בְּלִי, בִּלְעֲדֵי , בִּלְתִּי
m3) The First Vowel of
the Personal Name <yśrʾl>
"Israel"
m4) *maqtal (Aramaic)/*miqtaːl (abs.); miqtal
(constr.) (BH)
m5) The
First Vowel of the Personal Name <mrym>
n7) Numerals
Seven and Seventy
4.
When We Know the Path of Development but not when the Changes
Occurred
b) Third person
Feminine Singular of the Qal Suffix Conjugation
c) Third
Person Masculine Singular Pronominal Suffix
d) Locative ה
e) Interrogative Pronoun מָה (also לָמָּה, כָּמָּה)
h) יְהִי, גְּדִי, חֳלִי, פְּרִי and the Like
i) (Pro)pretonic Vowel Reduction
j) Pretonic Vowel Lengthening
or Equivalent Consonant Gemination
k) Homogeneous
Diphthong Contraction
l) Heterogeneous Diphthong
Contraction
m) Masculine Plural Construct
Ending of the Noun
n) Stress in the
Prefix Conjugation of the Strong Verb
o) Spirantization of the bgdkpt Consonants
5. What quality
were the Short Vowels in [EBHP]?
6.
When was Word-final hēʾ
Consonantal in EBHP?
7. What was the Nature of the "Emphatic Consonants" in [EBHP] and Probably [TH]?
8.
Were
the Conversive and Contextual Waw Differentiated in EBHP?
10.
Pronominal Suffixes of singular Noun - What was the Connecting Vowel in
EBHP?
11. The Vowel Following Prepositions b, k,, l in EBHP
12.
Transliteration
of the Devine Name YHWH
14. עוֹד
15. Was the PC Verb following אז Referring to the Past in PreExH Preterite or Imperfect?
16. Line Form and Meter of Biblical Hebrew Poetry
17. Issues Related to Tiberian Hebrew
a) Did the Tiberian
Masoretes Simply Encode Tradition or Did they "Do Grammar"?
b)
Were there Long and short vowels in TH and, if so, were
they Phonemic?
c) What are the Šwa and Ḥatef Vowels and How were they Pronounced?
I. Aim - recovering, as closely as
possible, the pronunciation (EBHP)
that a scribe in Jerusalem 700-600
1. Issues Arising from the Full or Partial Loss of Word-Final Short Vowels in the Late Second or Early First Millennium BCE.[5] (transition BHA phase 2 - BHA phase 3)
a. Did Word-Final Short Vowels Exist in EBHP
and Were All Word-Final Vowels Marked by Vowel Letters?
I. Areas of Agreement
In second millennium BCE Northwest Semitic languages, as in the later Classical
Arabic, words frequently ended
in short vowels. By the early first millennium BCE Hebrew[6], Phoenician and Aramaic
lost their noun and adjective case endings, at least some of the short final
vowels of the suffix conjugation (SC), as well as the mood endings of the prefix conjugation (PC) except for the cohortative.
i. Case endings of
the noun/adjective - It is clear from the feminine noun/adjective ending <h> (*/â/ < */at/) that, in EBHP, the case
endings must have been lost at least in feminine singular nouns[7]. Although we have no
real evidence that the other case ending related short vowels had been dropped[8], this is likely to
have been the case and we should proceed on that basis.
ii. PC mood endings - Although the indicative had lost its final short vowel (/u/), the cohortative had maintained its final
vowel (/a(ː)/). Working on the basis of the anceps assumption, Blau offers two explanations for the
maintenance of the final vowel of the cohortative in "Marginalia
Semitica
Since short
final vowels as a rule disappeared in Hebrew, we would have expected the same
to happen in ʾaqtla as well, rather than to be
lengthened and preserved. In all the other cases of survival of final short
vowels in Biblical Hebrew special conditions prevailed.... ʾaqtlā [10]
is quite often followed by נָא
'pray'.... I am tentatively suggesting that it was due to the frequency of this
construction, in which ʾaqtlā coalesced with nā and, therefore,*a occurred in
word middle, that *a >ā was preserved....
(W)e have attempted to explain the subsistence of ā by the coalescence of ʾaqtlā with nā.
Yet the frequent occurrence of 'aqtlā
with nā may also reflect the
separation of one word into two: the energetic *ʾaqtlana was decomposed into two words, which, however, continued to
be one stress unit. Since the first part of the new compound was
identified with ʾaqtlā
because of their formal and functional similarity, the flinal a of ʾaqtlā was preserved through the influence of ʾaqtlā-nā, in which this a was in word
middle. According to this thesis, ... Hebrew ʾaqtlā arose through plurilinear development: in
the main it continues yqtla, yet its final vowel is due to yqtlana.
iii.
As regards the SC, forms such
as <klh> (כָּלָה /kåˈlå/ *[kɔːˈlɔː] (TH) ← */kaːˈlâ/ < */kaˈlâ/[11] (/EBHP/+) ← */kaˈlaya/ (PH)) indicate that the final short /a/ of the third person masculine
had been dropped by the time of EBHP. As regards the other persons of the SC
(see below)
iv. Personal
pronouns (see
below)
II. Four Alternative Scenarios Regarding Unstressed Word-Final Vowels in the transition from BHA phase 2 to BHA phase 3
IIa. The Anceps Assumption[12]
This assumes that in PH (BHA phase 2) most of the unstressed
inflectional forms could end with either a long or short vowel (written here ã,
ĩ, ũ ). With the loss of the short final vowels, the forms ending
in long vowels remained whereas those ending in short vowels became
consonant-final. This would explain a number of doublets occurring in TH, e.g.
("to you (ms.)")
-
לְךָ /lәˈkå/
*[lәˈxcː]
(< */lәˈkaː/
*[lәˈxɐː] contextual) and
לָךְ /ˈlåk/ *[ˈlcːx]
(</ *ˈlaːk/
*[ˈlaːx]
pausal).
Examples of the "Anceps" Approach[13]
|
|
Prior to Loss of Word-Final Short Vowels |
After Loss of Word-Final Short Vowels |
|
I
(cs.) Suffix
Conjugation |
*/qaˈṭaltĩ/ |
**/qaˈṭaltiː/
(alternative */qaˈṭalt/
eliminated for clarity of expression)[14] |
|
Suffix Conjugation |
*/qaˈṭaltĩ/ |
**/qaˈṭalt/
(alternative */qaˈṭaltiː/
appears occasionally in consonantal text and may be northern dialect.
Jerusalem dialect rejected this form which would have been identical to first person.) |
|
you
(ms.) Suffix Conjugation |
*/qaˈṭaltã/ |
*/qaˈṭaltaː/ (alternative
*/qaˈṭalt/ was rejected as it
would have been identical to feminine) |
|
CONTRAST |
*/qaˈṭaltĩ/:*/qaˈṭaltĩ/:*/qaˈṭaltã/ (2
distinct forms) |
*/qaˈṭaltiː/:*/qaˈṭalt/:*/qaˈṭaltaː/ (3 distinct forms) |
|
|
|
|
|
You
independent nominative pronoun (m.s.) |
*/ˈ’attã/ |
*/ˈ’attaː/
(alternative */ˈ’at(t)/ was
rejected as it would have been identical to feminine) |
|
You
independent nominative pronoun (f.s.) |
*/ˈʾattĩ/ |
*/ˈʾat(t)/ (alternative */ˈ’attiː/
was rejected perhaps both because the final vowel did not add to clarity and
to bring it into line with 2
f.s. of suffix
conjugation.) |
|
CONTRAST |
*/ˈ’attã/:*/ˈʾattĩ/ (2
distinct forms) |
*/ˈ’attaː/:*/ˈʾat(t)/ (2 distinct forms) |
|
|
|
|
|
Your
(m.s.) "horse (m.s.) |
*/sūˈsukã/[15]
(nom.) */sūˈsakã/ (acc.) */sūˈsikã/ (gen.) |
*/sūˈsakaː/
(alternative */sūˈsaːk/
or */sūˈseːk/ was
rejected perhaps because it was less distinct from the feminine.) |
|
Your
(f.s.) "horse (m.s.) |
*/sūˈsukĩ/
(nom.) */sūˈsakĩ/ (acc.) */sūˈsikĩ/ (gen.) |
*/sūˈseːk/
(alternative */sūˈsikiː/
was rejected perhaps because the 2fs. SC, and 2fs. independant pronoun
now ended with consonant while the 2ms. SC, and 2ms. independant
pronoun now ended in /a(ː)/.) |
|
CONTRAST |
*/sūˈsukã/:*/sūˈsukĩ/ etc. (2
distinct forms for each case) |
*/sūˈsakaː/:*/sūˈseːk/ (2 distinct forms) |
Note:
i) The anceps assumption explains why some word-final vowels, which otherwise seem to have been short in PH, appear later as apparently long vowels e.g. the 2ms of the SC.
2) Early in BHA phase 3, when the nature of PH anceps vowels was still well remembered, poets might have chosen to use the long or short voweled forms, of suffixes consisting of a consonant followed by an anceps vowel or the consonant-final form derived from the short voweled form, to suit the context or metrical requirements - e.g.
Examples of EBHP Poetic Alternatives
Provided by PH Anceps Vowels
|
|
long-voweled form |
short-voweled form |
vowelless form derived from phase two
short- voweled form |
|
Independant
pronoun "you" f.s. |
*/ˈ’attiː/ |
*/ˈ’atti/ |
*/ˈ’att/ |
|
Independant
pronoun "he" |
*/ˈhu’aː/ |
*/ˈhu’a/ |
*/ˈhu’/ */ˈhuː/ |
|
Pronominal
suffix "your” ms. with s. noun |
*/úkaː/ (nom.) */ákaː/ (acc.) */íkaː/ (gen.) |
*/úka/
(nom.) */áka/
(acc.) */íka/
(gen.) |
*/aːk/ |
|
You
(ms.) Suffix Conjugation |
*/qaˈṭaltaː/ |
*/qaˈṭalta/ |
*/qaˈṭalt/ |
|
You/they
(f.p.) Prefix Conjugation |
*/taqˈṭulnaː/ |
*/taqˈṭulna/ |
*/tiqˈṭuln/ |
IIb. The Modified Anceps Option
This assumes that the distinction between unstressed word-final long and short vowels in BHA phase 2 (and indeed in BHA phase 3) was small. This is based on two observable facts:
i. that short word-terminal vowels, as in spoken Arabic today, are generally shortened versions of the equivalent long vowels in quality[16]; and,
ii. that stressed word-final short vowels tend to lengthen and unstressed word-final long vowels tend to shorten. It is instructive to consider that all of the unstressed word-final long vowels have been reduced to short vowels in all modern Arabic dialects. Thus the 2ms SC, if it was /taː/ might be pronounced [tɐˑ], not very different from /ta/ [tɐ].
IIc. Lengthening
of Unstressed Word-final Vowels
When the language ceased to allow short final vowels the vowels of those inflections felt by speakers to be crucial for communication were lengthened. At a later stage of the language, if short word-final vowels became once again acceptable, the newly lengthened word-final unstressed vowels, could have shortened. An example might be - */qaˈṭaltaː/ > */qaˈṭalta/. Either EBHP */qaˈṭaltaː/ or */qaˈṭalta/, given the known linguistic evolution of the language, would yield TH קָˈטַלתָּ /qåˈṭaltå/ *[qɔːˈṭɐːltɔː]. A flaw in this argument is that the first person (cs. and cp.) and third person (fs. and cp.) of the SC did not shorten.
IId. Protection of Unstressed
Word-final Vowels by Addition of a (later dropped) Final Consonant
This pictures Hebrew, in the transition from BHA phase 2 to BHA phase 3, following an evolutionary path similar to that followed by colloquial Arabic dialects in their formative periods.
The classical Arabic language, the cArabiya,
shows a marked difference between forms in context and pause.... The pausal
form of a word is the form it shows when it is spoken alone, in opposition to
the form it shows when one or more words follow immediately.... Common to
the pausal forms[18] of the cArabiya was that all of them ended in a long syllable, i.e. the final sound was a long vowel or a consonant. No short final vowel appeared in the cArabiya in pause. Those final short
vowels which occurred in context, were either dropped, or a consonant, mostly -h, was added to them
in pause. Examples: qatala
became qatal;
qi (imperative of waqā)
became qih;
qatalū was preserved.... when two different forms
of a word existed and the (modern spoken Egyptian Arabic) dialect has only one
form, one has to ask which of the two forms is the one still surviving. The
answer is not dubious; it is always the pausal form which survives.
(Regarding)... the short final vowels of the suffixes -ka
and -ki....(I)t
is not probable that ... the final vowels were long.... (modern spoken Egyptian
Arabic) a'būka
must be derived
from a'būkah
and a'būki
from a'būkih.
Also the final vowels of the independent personal pronouns 'inta, 'inti. 'iḥna, 'humma must
be assumed to originate from forms with short final vowels.
As in the Arabic, in this scenario the word-final short vowels, felt by speakers to be crucial for communication, were protected by adding a final consonant, usually [h]. An example from Arabic - Classical Arabic contextual 2fs. /qatalti/ became pausal /qataltih/. Spoken Arabic, which generalized the use of pausal forms, eventually dropped the final [h] recreating the original form /qatalti/ which remains the current form. A similar evolutionary path, including the dropping of the final consonant[19], would have happened in Hebrew in the transition from BHA phase 2 to BHA phase 3.
IIe. There was no general loss of short final vowels
There was an axial linguistic change in which a number of features, felt to be redundant by speakers, were eliminated - singular and plural case inflections, the final short vowels on plural and dual noun suffixes, mood endings and the final short vowel on a few forms of the perfect. Note the following perceptive comment of Ginzberg[20] -
A grammatical
peculiarity common in ancient Canaanite ... to the verb and the noun but later
eliminated entirely from the former and largely from the latter is the dual
number. In Hebrew even the adjective no longer has it, and the substantive
retains it only either with dual force - but only in the absolute state - in
expressions of quantity or without dual force in names of normally paired
objects. This process and the elimination of the category of case are
obviously major features of the morphological evolution of Canaanite. For the
loss of the cases is not merely incidental to the loss of final short
vowels, inasmuch as the vowels of the plural and dual endings were neither
short nor, in the absolute state, final. As the reviewer has shown ..., the
Gezer calendar inscription retains both the use of the dual (with dual meaning)
in the construct state and the category of case.... The elimination of case
distinctions and of the use of the dual in the construct state is no doubt
somehow connected with still another important morphological change, which
Hebrew (and perhaps other Canaanite languages) shares with Aramaic; namely, the substitution of -ay (>Heb. -ē), originally the construct dual ending, for -ῑ (corresponding to absol. -ῑm, and for -ū corresponding to the old nominative absol. -ūm - cf. Ugaritic and Arabic) as the ending of the construct masculine
plural. In Hebrew, which unlike Aramaic has a large number of masculine
substantives which form their plurals in -ōt (<-āt), even a number
of these have construct plurals in -ē (<-ay) (sometimes by the side of
construct plurals in -ōt); e. g., hēkāl, mōsād, miškān.
Under this scenario, all unstressed word-final short vowels, felt by speakers to be important, were maintained probably in their original short form. N.b. the following suffixes had unstressed long final vowels before this transition took place -
Original
Short Final Vowels that Probably Lengthened
Before
Loss of Word-Final Short Vowels[21]
|
|
*/PH/ (c. 1200 BCE) |
(c. 850-550 BCE) |
(c. 850 CE) |
|
Verbs |
*/qaˈṭalti/ |
*/qaˈṭaltiː/ *[qɐˈṭɐltiˑ] |
קָטַלְתִּי =
/qåˈṭalti/ *[qɔːˈṭɐːltiː] |
|
*/qaˈṭalnu/ |
*/qaˈṭalnuː/ *[qɐˈṭɐlnuˑ] |
קָטַלְנוּ =
/qåˈṭalnu/ *[qɔːˈṭɐːlnuː] |
All of these, except the last (IIIf), are explicitly or implicitly based on Scenarios IIa or IIb.
IIIa. Traditional View[22] - All Word-Final Vowels in EBHP/JEH Were Long and, With a Few Standard Exceptions (listed below), All Were Marked by Vowel Letters.
N.b. all of the following would have been unstressed in BHA phase 3.
· the pronominal suffix 2ms. ךָ (/ˈkå/ (/TH/+) *[әˈkɔː] ([TH]) ← */áka(ː)/ (/EBHP/));
· the pronominal suffix 3fp. on mp. noun הׇ (/ɛ́hå/ (/TH/+) *[ɛ́ːhɔː] ([TH]) ← */áyha(ː)/ (/EBHP/))
· the SC 2ms. suffix תָּ (/tå/(/TH/+) *[tɔː] ([TH]) ← */ta(ː)/ (/EBHP/)); and,
· the 2nd/3rd fp. suffix of the prefix conjugation /nå/ (/TH/+) *[nɔː] ([TH]) ← */na(ː)/ (/EBHP/)).
IIIa1. All final vowels were long. These
word-final vowels were represented by vowel letters except where the final
vowel would be clear to the native speaker by context. Such cases might vary
from scribe to scribe.
IIIb. Bange's view that in Hebrew and Aramaic of the period only stressed word-final vowels were marked by vowel letters.[23]
IIIc. Cook view that JEH observed the spelling conventions of contemporary Aramaic. He concluded that[24]
All the available evidence suggests that
final unstressed long vowels in Old and Imperial Aramaic could be,
and often were, written defectively. This is particularly true of final -Cā; only in the Middle
Aramaic period do we have full epigraphic evidence for the existence of these
vowels.
N.b. Jackson 1989 (p. 100) states that not all word-final long vowels were represented by vowel letters in the Moabite Mesha Inscription
IIId. Beyer's[25] view that:
·
all
independent pronouns and pronominal suffixes ended in unstressed long vowels
·
all persons of
the SC ended in unstressed
long vowels except 3ms. which ended in a consonant;
·
all persons of
the PC ended in unstressed long vowels except 1cs., 2 ms., 3ms. and 3fs. all of which ended in a consonant;
·
unstressed
word-final vowels were only graphically represented where necessary to avoid
misunderstandings.
Thus Beyer postulates that, for example, that the consonantal biblical text <swsk> should be read *[suːˈsakaː] if the suffix <k> = "you" refers to a male and *[suːˈsakiː] if the suffix <k> = "you" refers to a female.
Comments on Beyer's Views
Note that under Beyer's approach we have to explain how the 2 ms. pronominal suffix <k> (Beyer would vocalize *[kaː]) became /TH/+ /kå/ [TH] *[kɔː] while the 2 fs. pronominal suffix <k> (Beyer would vocalize *[kiː]) became /TH/+ /ẹk/ [TH] *[ẹːx]. One way to square this circle would be to assume that the pronunciation standing behind the PMT, and the vocalization tradition that developed into TH were rooted in different Hebrew dialects or different dialect mixtures[26]. (For further information and references see box - The Independent Pronouns in EBHP and Colloquial Arabic Dialects). On the whole this option seems to have little to recommend it. The idea that in the consonantal text forms such as <hm> and <hmh> 'your' mp. were both current as spellings of [ˈhimaː] does not seem likely unless we can correlate the spelling with different layers of the text.
IIIe. Andersen's View[27] - All Word-Final Vowels in EH Were Long and Were Almost Always Marked by Vowel Letters
All word-final vowels were long and represented by vowel letters and hence JEH and IEH words that end in consonants in the inscriptions were also pronounced as consonant final. Andersen wrote[28] -
Use of the spellings found in early Hebrew
inscriptions as evidence of the way words were pronounced can proceed on a sound
empirical basis only if one assumes that they wrote it the way they said it ---
or at least tried to. It is true that conservatism in spelling can perpetuate
an historical spelling after a consonant has become silent. The
consistent use of hēʾ to spell word-terminal long vowels other than
[ū] and [ῑ] came into vogue in the earliest stages of the adaptation
of the Phoenician alphabet to Aramaic, even though hēʾ as marker of the f. sg. suffix -â was never a
consonant. But whereas waw and yod came increasingly into use to
spell word-medial long [ū] and [ῑ] respectively, hēʾ
was never used to spell any word-medial vowel. This skews the system. In any
case, whatever the thinking behind this restriction not all vowel letters used
in Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions originated in historical spellings; phonetic
considerations operated from the earliest stages of the use of consonant
letters to represent certain vowels. It earliest can still be maintained as a
rule that all word-terminal vowels were represented by waw, yod
or hēʾ never alef
and that word-medial ū and (rarely other long
vowels, notably monophthongized diphthongs) were sometimes and
increasingly represented bywaw or yod. Occasional scribal lapses
are only to be expected, but they are so few that they make no difference to
the large picture.
...The spelling practices described above mean that if there was no word-terminal vowel letter in the written
word, there was no word-terminal vowel in the uttered word. It is accordingly,
bad method that brings chaos into the system to project
medieval Masoretic pronunciations back onto ancient Hebrew words and then
to claim that the spelling of some words without vowel letters shows that the
rules were not strictly followed. Inferences of this kind
are most commonly made with words that end in -ā in Masoretic Hebrew, but
which turn up without the expected terminal hēʾ in the
inscriptions. A blatant example of this kind of anachronism
is the equating of the adverb ct "now" with
biblical cth cattâ (consistently [x 433] - ct is attested twice in the Hebrew Bible and
attracts qere [Ezek 23:43; Ps 74.6]) and then claiming that this shows
that the spelling of the final vowel was "variable". Yet the scribes
at Lachish and Arad did not vary the spelling of this word; they spelled it
consistently עת
rather than עתה.
Since we can no longer hear anyone at Arad or Lachish reading their mail, we
cannot say dogmatically that they did not enunciate ct as cattâ. But why exempt this one
word habitually from the treatment of final long -â that was routinely spelled with hēʾ
in those days? It is simpler to infer that they wrote it the way they said it,
and that there was no final vowel on their ct. While the only way to find out for certain how
they actually said this word would be to wait until the resurrection and use an
Israelite from pre-Exilic times as an informant as we do with speakers of
contemporary languages, at the very least the attested spelling עת is most naturally
interpreted as a representation of cat(t). The fact that there are
several such word pairs in Hebrew lends plausibility, if not certainty, to that
conclusion.
... There is a
phenomenon in the Masoretic writing practice in which the vocalization does not
match the consonantal orthography, namely the result of the punctuators'
decision to supply qāmeṣ to some 3rd sg. f.
pronoun suffixes, spelled with consonantal hēʾ but with no vowel letter and taken to be -hā contrary to the otherwise
universal practice of marking all word-terminal vowels (all of which were long) by an appropriate vowel
letter which would have been hēʾ in this instance . The same was done to some
forms of the 2nd sg. m. suffixes -tā and -kā, and pl. f, -nā, even though they might
not have the requisite vowel letter hēʾ which was used for these suffixes in a small
fraction of their occurrences in the received text of the Hebrew Bible (see
Table 1) . Just how to interpret this evidence is a complicated and much
disputed question, which in the context of our present concern takes the form
of asking how Hebrew speakers in biblical times pronounced these suffixes. We
think it is possible that both forms existed side by side in the classical
language, but whether in free fluctuation or as "high style" and
"low style" forms we have no way of knowing. The consonantal
orthography has first claim, so we take dbrk, "thy word", as reflecting something
like *dabarak rather than Masoretic dĕbārĕkā, dbryh, "her words", as *dabarayh, not dabāreyhā.
Comments on Andersen's Views
The paper (Andersen 1999), in which Andersen presents his views is learned and rich with supporting detail. That being said, I do not find his main points convincing. Note the following:
1) It is widely held that the final vowel of
the first person perfect [tiː] lengthened very early in
the history of the Hebrew language and that this was the only form of
this suffix to enter into what I have
called BHA
phase 3. Evidently
unwilling to let go of this view and to follow his principle "... that if
there was no word-terminal vowel letter in the written
word, there was no word-terminal vowel in the uttered
word", Andersen wrote -
The verb suffix
-tῑ "I" is always spelled -ty in Masoretic Hebrew when word-terminal. There is
no evidence that the vowel of this morpheme was ever lost. It would be perverse to extend the kind of analysis appropriate for ct - cth to the three
known instances in ancient Hebrew inscriptions in which the suffix
"I" is spelled simply -t not the expected -ty (also attested .... Without becoming overly doctrinaire with the
hypothesis that "they wrote it the way they said it".... (scribes
sometimes make mistakes), the analogous loss of the vowel from -tῑ "thou [2nd f: sg.]"
does give a mild reason to suspect that this vowel mlght have been lost
sometimes from the suffix -tῑ "I" in these words. There are three reasonable explanations for
these deviations from common practice, with defective spelling of a
final long vowel, exceptions to the rule that all final vowels were represented
by the appropriate vowel letter: (1) scribal carelessness; (2) rare loss of the
vowel ending in speech, correctly shown in the writing; (3) the continuing
influence of Phoenician ortheopy. In places where Israelite and Phoenician
cultures met it would not be surprising if spelling practices were mixed....
I should point out that his implicitly disparaging statement "... the three known
instances in ancient Hebrew inscriptions in which the
suffix "I" is spelled simply -t not the expected -ty ..." should
be understood in the context of the tiny corpus of inscriptions available. According to Gogel 1998 (p.
77) "There are six, possibly seven ... examples of
perfects with suffix -ty, and three with ending -t." This compares with 2ms. "There are five
certain examples of perfects with suffix -t (two others ... are probable) and
five with ending -th."
2) Regarding
whether JEH <ct> is equivalent to TH עַˈתָּה /catˈtå/ *[ ʕɐtˈtɔː] (pausal
ˈעָתָּה /ˈcåttå/
*[ˈʕɔːttɔː]). To start with, it is generally recognized that the TH pausal form of
this word reflects the stress pattern in in BHA phase 3 [29]. Given our understanding of the historical development of Hebrew, it is
likely that the PMT form <cth> would correspond to /EBHP/
*/ˌcitta(ː)/ while the related noun עֵת would correspond to /EBHP/ */ˌcit(t)/.
JEH <ct>
appears in letters etc. after the formal salutation and seems to carry the
meaning "here is the issue" or the like. It functions much like לֵאמׂר in the Bible which is
a sort of spoken notice of a following quote. In terms of the two Biblical
Hebrew words (עתה and עת), the choice is either:
a. JEH <ct> corresponds in
pronunciation to /EBHP/ */ˌcitta(ː)/ lacking a final vowel letter because:
·
it is one of a
small group of common words or inflections (*/-ka(ː)/, */-ta(ː)/,
*/-na(ː)/) written by convention without the vowel letter; or
· the word-final vowel was long but current scribal practice left the option of omitting unstressed final long vowels; or
· the word-final vowel was short and current scribal practice did not use vowel letters for word-final short vowels.
b. JEH <ct> corresponds in pronunciation to /EBHP/ */ˌcit(t)/
IIIf. Word-final Unstressed Short Vowels
Did Exist in EBHP/EH and Were Generally Not Marked by Vowel Letters
It is likely that all stressed word-final vowels were long (originally
long, lengthened due to contraction and
assimilation or
stress-lengthened) while unstressed word-final vowels could have been either
short or long. However, it is important to note that stressed word-final short vowels
would tend to lengthen and unstressed word-final long vowels would tend to
shorten. It is most
instructive to consider that all of the unstressed word-final long vowels have been reduced to short vowels in all modern Arabic dialects. Thus the 2ms SC, if it was /taː/ might be
pronounced [tɐˑ], not very different from /ta/ [tɐ].
We could see this as having developed in two
ways either as per Scenario IIc or IId (above). The following
table illustrates this approach -