The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew. Volume I
|I.2. Vowels and Syllable Structure
Texte intégral
I.2.1. Basic Vowel Signs
I.2.1.1. The Qualities of the Vowels
1The basic vowel signs in the standard Tiberian vocalization system indicated distinctions in vowel quality rather than distinctions in length. The qualities of the various vowels can be reconstructed as follows from the sources that are discussed below (the signs are added to the letter א ):
Pataḥ | א ַַ( פ ָּ ת ַ ח ): | Open, unrounded front [a] or back [ɑ] |
Qameṣ | ק ָמֵץ ( א ָ): | Back, open-mid rounded [ɔ] |
Segol | :) א ֶַ( ס ֶ ג ֹ לו | Front, open-mid unrounded [Ɛ] |
Ṣere | א ֵַ( צ ֵֵ יר ): | Front, close-mid unrounded [e] |
Ḥireq | :) א ִַ( ח ִ י ֶ קר | Front, close, unrounded [i] |
Ḥolem | ֹ א ַֹ( ח ֹ לו ֶ ם ): | Back, close-mid rounded [o] |
Shureq Qibbuṣ |
) א ּ ו ( ׁ ש ּ ו ֶ קר :) א ַ( ק ִּ ב ּ ץו |
Back, close, rounded [u] |
2These qualities correspond to the eight primary cardinal vowels, which are represented diagrammatically according to their position of articulation below:
I.2.1.2. The Terms Patah and Qameṣ
- 1 For examples in early Karaite grammatical texts (Khan 2000a, 28).
- 2 For the sources see Steiner (2009).
- 3 Eldar (1994, 123–24)
- 4 In Jewish Palestinian Aramaic the verb קמץ is used in the sense of ‘closing (eye, mouth), e.g. דיַ (...)
- 5 Dotan (2007, 634).
- 6 For details see Steiner (2009).
3The terms pataḥ and qameṣ are found in the early Masoretic and grammatical sources. They are in origin Aramaic active participles and are vocalized as such in some manuscripts, viz. פ ָּ ת ַ ח and . ק ָּ מ ֵ ץ1 In some Masoretic treatises forms with a final he are used, viz. החתפ and הצמק . The suffix may be the Aramaic definite article or the feminine ending.2 In Arabic sources such as Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ equivalent Arabic feminine participles are used, viz. החתאפ fātiḥa and הצמאק qāmiṣa.3 The terms referred to the distinct lip positions of the two vowels, pataḥ ‘opening’, qameṣ ‘closing, contracting’,4 indicating that the pataḥ was pronounced with open, spread lips whereas the qameṣ was pronounced with a smaller aperture of the mouth on account of some degree of lip-rounding. The fact that the terms are Aramaic in origin indicates that they must have been created in the early Masoretic period, before the tenth century, when Aramaic was in productive use by the Masoretes. By the tenth century, Masoretic treatises were written in Hebrew or Arabic (§I.0.13.1.). The names of these vowels came to receive a variety of different vocalizations in later sources. The practice developed of vocalizing the first syllable of the names of vowels symbolically with the vowel it designated, so pataḥ came to be vocalized as פ ַ ת ַ ח . This type of vocalization, which according to Dotan was used from the eleventh century onwards,5 is the vocalization used, for example, by Elias Levita (1469-1549). Subsequently, the vowel of the second syllable of the names of vowels was also given a similar symbolic vocalization. These often reflect pronunciation traditions that did not distinguish between the pronunciation of the two vowels and one finds vocalizations such as פ ַ ת ָ ח , ק ָ מ ַ ץ and . פ ַּ ת ָּ ח6
I.2.1.3. More on the Quality of Patah and Qameṣ
- 7 For details see Eldar (1983).
- 8 (...)
- 9 (Dotan 1997, 445)
- 10 long version , edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.15.2.; Eldar (1994, 130).
4Saadya and Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ give details of the articulatory distinction between the vowels within the oral cavity. Their descriptions are based on a theory of the production of vowels, which can be traced to the Muslim physician Ibn Sīnā (980–1037 C.E.), that involves both the position of buccal organs and the direction of the dynamic flow of air.7 The Hidāya states that the place of articulation of pataḥ is the ‘surface of the tongue at the bottom (of the mouth)’.8 Saadya similarly states that ‘its strength (i.e. dynamic realization by airflow) goes over the surface of the tongue moving downwards.’9 With regard to qameṣ the Hidāya indicates that its place of articulation is ‘slightly above the root of the tongue, that is the (back) third of the tongue, and its movement is towards the (place) above the palate.’10 Saadya indicates that the place of articulation of qameṣ is next to that of ḥolem:
- 12 For this interpretation see Eldar (1983, 47).
5According to the theory of the realization of vowels by dynamic airflow, the realization of pataḥ took place through the free flow of air across the surface of the tongue in a low position, whereas in the realization of qameṣ there was some obstruction that directed the air upwards towards the palate.12
6From the vowel names and the aforementioned descriptions of articulation, it can be determined that Tiberian pataḥ was an open, unrounded vowel in the region of [a] or [ɑ] whereas qameṣ was a back half-open rounded vowel below ḥolem in the region of [ɔ].
7As indicated, it is likely that pataḥ had both an open front quality [a] and an open back quality [ɑ]. The back quality [ɑ] would have been induced in particular by the environment of consonants involving retraction of the tongue root, especially pharyngeals and pharyngealized consonants. Indirect evidence for this is found in the modern reading traditions of Middle Eastern communities, in which the front open vowels have back open variants in particular when adjacent to pharyngeal or pharyngealized consonants. This is the case in the Sefardi type traditions, in which pataḥ and qameṣ have a default quality of [a], e.g.
8Baghdad
9[a] quality:
ˈjaːʕaˌbod (Morag 1977, 53 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 21.2 ‘he will work’)
šaˈnaː (Morag 1977, 56 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 47.28 ‘year’)
10[ɑ] quality:
wajjiˈṭɑbˑ (Morag 1977, 54 | L [BHS]:
Esther 1.21 ‘and [the matter] was good’)
ˈbɑːʕaˌra (Morag 1977, 56 | L [BHS]:
Esther 1.12 ‘ [his anger] burned’)
11Aleppo
12[a] quality:
ˌjaʕaˈqọːb (Katz 1981, 45 | L [BHS]: Gen. 47.28 ‘Jacob’)
∫aˈnim (Katz 1981, 45 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 47.28 ‘years)
13[ɑ] quality:
lezɑrʕɑˈxa (Katz 1981, 46 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 48.4 ‘to your (ms) seed’)
14Jerba
15[a] quality:
ˌwenaˈfale (Katz 1977, 82 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 21.18 ‘and he falls’)
joˈmar (Katz 1977, 83 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 21.5 ‘ [the slave] will say’)
hi∫ˈ∫a (Katz 1977, 83 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 21.3 ‘woman’)
16[ɑ] quality:
ˈjɪqqɑħ (Katz 1977, 84 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 21.10 ‘he will take’)
wẹˈjɑsˁiˈha (Katz 1977, 75 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 21.3 ‘ [his wife] will leave’)
17In the Karaite transcriptions long pataḥ and qameṣ are generally represented by mater lectionis ʾalif, e.g.
[vaɟɟiggɔːˈmaːal] (BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 63r, 2 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 21.8 ‘and he was weaned’)
18The qualities of pataḥ [a] and [ɑ] would have been allophones of Arabic long /ā/, the latter in pharyngealized environments (known as tafkhīm). The choice of ʾalif in the Karaite transcriptions for the rounded qameṣ [ɔ] was due to its proximity to the normal range of allophones of Arabic /ā/.
19The back rounded open-mid quality of qameṣ and its distinctness from pataḥ is reflected by some of the medieval Karaite transcriptions. The vowel is, for example, sporadically represented by Arabic wāw, e.g.
[vɔʔɔːˈsaːaf] (Genizah MS 12, Khan 1990a, 151 | L [BHS]:
(Num. 19.9 ‘and he will gather up’)
[vaR̟ɔːˈħɑːɑsˤ] (Genizah MS 12, Khan 1990a, 151 | L [BHS]:
Num. 19.8 ‘and he will bathe’)
[hɔːʔaːˈħaːθ] (II Firkovitch Arab.-Evr. 1, Harviainen 1994, 36 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 4.19 ‘the one’)
[jisrˁɔːˈʔeːel] (II Firkovitch Arab.-Evr. 1, Harviainen 1994 ,36 | L [BHS]:
‘Israel’)
20In the British Library manuscript Or 2554, the qualitative distinction between the open vowel pataḥ and the open-mid back round vowel qameṣ is reflected by the fact that syllables with pataḥ are marked by the Arabic vowel fatḥa, but fatḥa is not marked on syllables with qameṣ, e.g.
ان ْ ث َ ا ْ ن [nɔːˈθaːan] (BL Or 2554 fol. 38v, 1 | L [BHS]: נ ָ ת ַ֥ ן Cant. 1.12 ‘it gave’)
ي َ ذال َ ثا ْ اخ [jalɔːˈðaːaθχɔː] (BL Or 2554 fol. 87r, 9 | L [BHS]:
Cant. 8.5 ‘she gave birth to you’)
I.2.1.4. The Quality of Qameṣ in Other Traditions
The medieval Babylonian pronunciation tradition also had a qualitative distinction between open pataḥ and rounded qameṣ. This is reflected by Babylonian terminology for the vowels, viz. miftaḥ pumma ( חתפימ ַ אמופ ) ‘opening of the mouth’, which corresponds to the Tiberian term pataḥ, and miqpaṣ pumma ( ץפקימ ַ אמופ ) ‘contraction (i.e., rounding) of the mouth’, which corresponds to the Tiberian term qameṣ. The roundedness of Babylonian qameṣ and its proximity in the vowel space to ḥolem is reflected also by the representation of the vowel with wāw in medieval Arabic transcriptions written by Muslims in the eastern region of the Islamic world where Babylonian Hebrew pronunciation was used, e.g. al-Bīrūnī, Chronology of Nations (Khan 2013d): ה ַ ת ָּ מ ִ די ( ديموته ‘the daily offering’), באָ ( بوا ‘Av’), ومح ( ח ַ מּ ָ ה ‘sun’), ּ ב ְּ ת ו לּ ָ ה ( ولوثب ‘Virgo’). In Hebrew words in incantation bowls from Babylonian datable to the pre-Islamic period of the first millennium C.E. there are some occurrences of vav that corresponds to qameṣ, e.g. ךורוב ‘blessed’ (Tiberian ), שודוק , ‘holy’ (Tiberian ) (Juusola 1999, 54–68; Mishor 2007, 219; Molin 2020).
- 13 Data supplied by Aaron Hornkohl.
21The roundedness of qameṣ and its proximity in the vowel space to ḥolem is reflected by numerous occurrences of vav in biblical texts from Qumran where the Tiberian tradition has qameṣ. Several of these are in the environment of labial consonants, which could have conditioned the rounding of the vowel, e.g.13
( 11Q5 13.13 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 119.161 ‘without cause’)
( 4Q27 f6–10.12 | L [BHS]:
Num. 16.1 ‘and Abiram’)
( 4Q57 f9ii+11+12i+52.40 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 24.14 ‘from the sea’)
22In many cases, however, it is likely that the vav reflects a different morphological form or exegesis from that of the Tiberian tradition (Kutscher 1979, 247, 473–74), e.g.
( 1QIsaa 5.3 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 5.17 ‘sheep’)
( 1QIsaa 41.16 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 49.17 ‘your [fs] children’)
( 1QIsaa 18.11 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 23.7 ‘its former time’)
( 4Q59 f4–10.2 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 8.3 ‘Hash’)
( 1QIsaa 5.17 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 5.28 ‘like flint’)
( 1QIsaa 11.12 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 13.1 ‘ [Isaiah] saw’)
( 1QIsaa 19.3 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 24.6 ‘ [and inhabitants of the land] are scorched’)
( 1QIsaa 27.29 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 33.24 ‘inhabitant’)
( 1QIsaa 33.19 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 40.20 ‘to prepare’)
- 14 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
23In the ancient Greek transcriptions of Hebrew, long qameṣ is generally represented by α. There are a few sporadic cases where ω or ο correspond to Tiberian long qameṣ. Most of these, however, are likely to reflect different morphological patterns or have some other explanation rather than reflecting a back rounded quality, e.g.14
24Septuagint (third century B.C.E.)
Ἰωυὰν (Göttingen Septuagint | L [BHS]:
Gen. 10.2 ‘Javan’)
Ἰωβέλ (Göttingen Septuagint | L [BHS]:
Gen. 4.20 ‘Jabal’)
Γαυλὼν (Göttingen Septuagint | L [BHS]:
Deut. 4.43 ‘Golan’)
25The exceptional case Iωυαν may be explained as an imitation of the Greek word with a similar meaning, ἴων. The examples Iωβελ and Γαυλων probably reflect different patterns (Knobloch 1995, 181, 314, 394-395).
26Hexapla of Origen (c. 185–254 C.E.)
ουεσοϰημ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]
Psa. 18.43 ‘and I crush them’)
εμωσημ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.39 ‘I strike them’)
σϕωθαϊ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 89.35 ‘my lips’)
ολδ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 49.2 ‘(the) world’)
- 15 Yuditsky compares σϕωθαϊ to forms like בשפאותיכה and שפות in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Yuditsky 2017).
27The first two forms most likely reflect an /o/ theme vowel (rather than an /a/ theme vowel) in these verbs. The final two forms are likely to reflect variant morphological patterns.15
28In the writings of Jerome (346-420 C.E.), there are a few cases where the vowel o occurs corresponding to Tiberian long qameṣ, e.g.
zochor (Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah, ed. Gryson, VIII.23.56 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 26.14 ‘male’)
chauonim (Jerome, Commentary on Jeremiah, ed. Reiter, 100.21–22 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 7.18 ‘cakes’)
gob (Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel, ed. Glorie, V.16.85 | L [BHS]:
Ezek. 16.24 ‘pit’)
bosor (Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah, ed. Gryson, X.14.82– 84 | L [BHS]: ּ
Isa. 34.6 ‘flesh’)
29In most cases, however, Jerome represents the vowel corresponding to Tiberian long qameṣ by a, e.g.
enach (Jerome, Commentary on the Minor Prophets, ed. Adriaen, Amos, III.7, p. 318, line 178 | L [BHS]:
Amos 7.7 ‘plumbline’)
hissa (Jerome, Hebraicae Quaestiones in Libro Geneseos, ed. de Lagarde et al., 45.1 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 2.23 ‘woman’)
ethan (Jerome, Commentary on Jeremiah, ed. Reiter, 72.14 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 5.15 ‘enduring’)
aiala (Jerome, Hebraicae Quaestiones in Libro Geneseos, ed. de Lagarde et al., 70.20 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 49.21 ‘doe’)
emsa (Jerome, Commentary on the Minor Prophets, ed. Adriaen, Zechariah, III.12, p. 863, line 132 | L [BHS]:
Zech. 12.5 ‘strength’)
30There are also some cases where the vowel corresponding to long qameṣ is e, e.g.
besor (Jerome, Commentary on the Minor Prophets, ed. Adriaen, Zechariah, III.11, p. 849, line 25 | L [BHS]:
[lege
] Zech. 11.2 ‘thick (ms)’)
ciceion (Jerome, Commentary on the Minor Prophets, ed. Adriaen, Jonah, IV, p. 414, line 126 | L [BHS]:
Jonah 4.6 ‘gourd/plant’)
- 16 See §I.1.20 and Ben-Ḥayyim (1946, 194–96), Kutscher (1979, 496– 97) and Mishor (1998).
31The cases of o corresponding to long qameṣ are, therefore, marginal and it is likely that they either reflect morphological patterns that are different from the Tiberian tradition or are conditioned by the consonantal environment (Harviainen 1977, 104–6). This applies, for example, to zochor and bosor, in which the o may have been conditioned by the r. In Palestinian Aramaic dialects and Rabbinic Hebrew resh often brings about such a vowel shift.16
32The fact that long qameṣ had a back rounded quality in both the Tiberian and Babylonian traditions of pronunciation could, nevertheless, be proposed as an argument for this to be a shared feature that the two traditions have retained from a proto-Masoretic tradition of reading in Second Temple Palestine.
33The open-mid back rounded quality [ɔ] of qameṣ, distinct from the open quality of pataḥ, has been preserved in the modern traditions of pronunciation of most Yemenite communities, which have their roots in the Babylonian tradition, e.g.
mɪðbɔːrɔː (Morag 1963, 100 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 16.1 ‘in the desert’)
I.2.1.5. Segol and Ṣere
- 17 Bacher (1974, 15), Steiner (2005b, 374, 377–78), Posegay (2020).
- 18 Baer and Strack (1879, §10), Dotan (2007, 634). The attribute qaṭan ‘small’ reflects the concept t (...)
34In the early Tiberian Masoretic sources the terms pataḥ and qameṣ were used not only for the vowels represented by the signs pataḥ and qameṣ in the Tiberian vocalization, but also for the vowels segol and ṣere respectively. This early terminology appears to have developed before the creation of the vowel signs and indicated broad differences in lip-position of the vowels, as a guide to instruct readers how to distinguish between the various vowel qualities.17 The vowels pataḥ and segol were pronounced with spread, open lips, whereas there was some degree of closure of the lips in the pronunciation of qameṣ and ṣere. In a later version of this terminology, segol was referred to as pataḥ qaṭan ‘small pataḥ’ and ṣere as qameṣ qaṭan ‘small qameṣ’ with Hebrew adjectives qualifying the originally Aramaic term.18
- 19 E.g. Allony and Yeivin eds. (1985, 96).
The term segol comes from Aramaic ‘cluster of grapes’, referring to the graphic appearance of the vowel sign rather than its phonetic production. Its vocalization with shewa under the samekh is attested in some early Masoretic treatises.19 In Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ it has the form הלוגס with a feminine ending.
- 20 Dotan (1997, 113; 2007, 634).
- 21 Short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.6.0.
- 22 E.g. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.17.
- 23 E.g. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.1.7.8.; short version, (...)
- 24 Eldar (1994, 124).
- 25 Steiner (2009, 496). For other vocalizations of the vowels see Dotan (2007, 634).
The term ṣere is from the Aramaic verb ‘to split’. Since these terms are Aramaic, they are likely to have been created in the early Masoretic period and they indeed appear in early sources, such as the grammar book of Saadya.20 It is not clear what the original form of the name ṣere was. The author of Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ states that it means ‘splitting’ (šāqq) (through the lips),21 suggesting that he read it as a participle
In some manuscripts of Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, however, it is vocalized
22 It is sometimes spelt, moreover, יריצ both in Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ and in Saadya’s work, with mater lections yod after the ṣade, and this is vocalized
in some places.23 In a Masoretic treatise published by Allony and Yeivin (1985, 96) it has the form
It is likely that the term is related to the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic word
‘split, fissure.’24 The name refers to the contraction of the lips to the extent that there is only a small aperture between them. In later sources the practice developed of vocalizing the first syllable with the vowels that the terms designated, i.e.
and eventually also changing the quality of the second syllable in symbolic representation of the pronunciation of the vowel, resulting in forms such as
25
- 26 Cf. Dotan (2007, 634), e.g. Baer and Strack (1879, 34–36), the treatise on the shewa published by L (...)
In some Masoretic treatises and early grammatical texts, segol and ṣere are referred to by the phrases ‘three dots’ (thalāth nuqaṭ) and ‘two dots’ (
nuqṭatāni) respectively.26 This is probably a relic from a period in which only the names pataḥ and qameṣ were in existence.
Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ describes the articulation of segol as being on ‘the lower surface of the mouth, ’27 as is the case with pataḥ, but with ‘contraction of the sides of the mouth’.28 Saadya states that the segol is articulated in the same position as pataḥ when the speaker ‘fills the lower sides of the mouth with it.’29 This can be interpreted as referring to a smaller degree of opening of the mouth in the pronunciation of the vowel and a consequential protuberance of the cheeks. The smaller aperture is reflected also in the term ‘small pataḥ’ in some Masoretic sources.30 The result is an open-mid unrounded [Ɛ].
35In the Karaite transcriptions, long segol is represented by mater lectionis ʾalif, e.g.
[bɑR̟ˈzƐːƐ1] (BL Or 2549 fol. 145r, 4 | L [BHS]: ּ
Ezek. 4.3 ‘iron’)
36The quality [Ɛ] was an allophone of Arabic long /ā/, due to a process known by the medieval grammarians as ʾimāla ‘inclining’, i.e. inclining towards the vowel /ī/.
- 31 long version , edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.15.5.
- 32 (...)
37Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ presents the articulation of the vowels ṣere and ḥireq as involving similar gestures. The place of articulation of ṣere is ‘the teeth, without closure, because it breaks through them’31 whereas the articulation of ḥireq involves ‘the closure of the teeth tightly.’32 Saadya likewise links the articulation of the two vowels:
The Masoretic term ‘small qameṣ’ for ṣere would refer to the lesser degree of closure of the lips than in the articulation of qameṣ.
I.2.1.6. Ḥireq
- 34 E.g. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.1.7.8. For other source (...)
- 35 E.g. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.6.0, MS S18, fol. 7r. (...)
- 36 Haupt (1901, 15) proposes that the name is related etymologically to Arabic kharq ‘rent, fissure’ (...)
- 37 Dotan (2007, 634), Khan (2000, 28).
The original vocalization of the name ḥireq is uncertain. The name is spelt in the manuscript of Saadya’s grammar book. The vocalization as a segolate form
is found in some manuscripts of Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ and medieval sources,34 or
35 In the Masoretic treatise published by Allony and Yeivin (1985, 92) it has the Aramaic form
The form
reflects the later development of vocalizing the first syllable with the vowel the name designates. In Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, the verbal root ḥrq in the peʿal and paʿel has the meaning of ‘to gnash (one’s teeth)’, which is likely to refer to the tight closure of the teeth in the articulation of the vowel referred to in the Hidāya.36 The vowel is also referred to in some early sources as ‘one dot’ (
nuqṭa wāḥida).37 Abraham ibn Ezra (1089–c. 1167) used the Hebrew term
‘breaking’ to refer to this vowel (Lambert 1889, 124–25).
38In the Karaite transcriptions, both long ṣere and ḥireq are normally represented by Arabic mater lectionis yāʾ, e.g.
[higgɔːˈmeːel] (BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 63r, 3 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 21.8 ‘to be weaned’)
[vohoːˈR̟iːðuː] (BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 105r, 7 | L [BHS]:
Deut. 21.4 ‘and they will bring down’)
39The choice of mater lectionis yāʾ to represented the quality [eː] of ṣere was no doubt due to its being perceived as approximating more closely to the prototypical quality of Arabic /ī/ than to that of Arabic /ā/.
I.2.1.7. Ḥolem, Shureq and Qibbuṣ
- 38 (...)
- 39 (...)
- 40 Bacher (1974, 16), Dotan (2007, 634), Eldar (1994, 121, 125).
- 41 Ben Yehuda (1980, vol. 3, 1466-67). The manuscript of Saadya’s grammar book has (...)
- 42 Dotan (2007, 634), Khan (2000, 28).
According to Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, the meaning of name ḥolem is ‘fullness’38 since the vowel ‘fills the mouth’.39 In the Masoretic treatise published by Allony and Yeivin (1985, 92) it has the Aramaic form
An alternative name for the vowel in some Masoretic sources is
‘filling the mouth’. This is presented in opposition to
‘contraction of the mouth’ (also called
) which refers in these sources to the /u/ vowel of shureq and qibbuṣ.40 This terminology relates to the smaller rounding of the lips in the production of the shureq quality. A few medieval sources vocalize the name ḥolem as a segolate
or
41 Some early sources refer to ḥolem by the description the ‘upper dot’ (
al-nuqṭa al-fawqāniyya) or similar phrases.42
40Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ states that the place of articulation of the ḥolem is the root of the tongue and the ‘place of swallowing’, i.e. the pharynx43 and that the ‘movement of the vowel (i.e. the airflow in its realization) is across the whole area of the mouth’.44 According to Saadya’s description, ḥolem is the vowel that is articulated furthest back in the mouth and its ‘strength (i.e. dynamic airflow in its realization) moves forward without deviating upwards or downwards.’45
- 46 (...)
- 47 In some manuscripts with Non-standard Tiberian vocalization the sign is written reversed, with the (...)
- 48 E.g. long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.1.6. This term is also used by the au (...)
- 49 Joseph Qimḥi, Sefer Zikkaron (ed. Bacher 1888, 17), Bacher (1974, 17).
The Hidāya interprets the name shureq as ‘whistling’, because it ‘gathers the lips together’,46 i.e. the lips are rounded in the position they have when one whistles. The Hidāya uses this as a general term to refer to the vowel quality /u/, including what was later called specifically qibbuṣ (i.e. the sign without a vowel letter).47 It occasionally refers to the sign ַ
however, by the term al-zujj (literally: ‘the arrow-head’).48 The term qibbuṣ was introduced by Joseph Qimḥi, who categorized them as two separate vowels, the former long and the latter short.49
- 50 Dotan (2007, 634).
- 51 (...)
- 52 (Dotan 1997, 447).
In some medieval sources, including manuscripts of the Hidāya, the name shureq is vocalized as a segolate50 In the Masoretic treatise published by Allony and Yeivin (1985, 92) it has the Aramaic form
According to the Hidāya, the place of its articulation was ‘the lips (when) gathered together like (for) whistling.’51 Likewise, Saadya states that it is pronounced ‘between the teeth and the lips’.52
41In the Karaite transcriptions, long ḥolem and long shureq/qibbuṣ are normally represented by Arabic mater lectionis wāw, e.g.
[haggɔːˈðoːol] (BL Or 2544 fol. 74v, 2 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 3.3 ‘the great’)
[tiħˈjuːun] (BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 93v, 5 | L [BHS]:
Deut. 8.1 ‘you (mpl) will live’)
42Sporadically mater lectionis ʾalif represents ḥolem in the transcriptions, e.g.
[baθoːˈχɔːɔm] (Genizah MS 12, Khan 1990a, 151 | L [BHS]: ּ
Num. 19.10 ‘in their midst’)
- 53 The text was published by Razhaby (1983).
Such a transcription could be an attempt to represented the lower quality of ḥolem compared to that of shureq/qibbuṣ rather than a fronted quality of ḥolem. This is demonstrated by a transcription of Hebrew liturgical poetry in the Genizah manuscript T-S Ar.37.89,53 which represents ḥolem by ʾalif, e.g: In this text, the glide between ḥolem and a following furtive pataḥ is transcribed by wāw, demonstrating that the ḥolem was pronounced as a back [oː]:
I.2.1.8. Medieval Classifications of Vowels
- 54 Eldar (1983), Dotan (1997, 113–14).
43In some sources, the seven Tiberian vowels are classified into the three groups (i) pataḥ, segol, qameṣ, (ii) ṣere, ḥireq and (iii) shureq/qibbuṣ, ḥolem by associating them with three prototype vowels. Saadya, for example, associates each of these groups with the Arabic case vowels a (naṣb ‘holding steady’), i (khafḍ ‘lowering’) and u (rafʿ ‘raising’) respectively. He classifies them further within these categories according to the notion of degree of height of the airflow in their production,54 viz.
- 55 Dotan notes that the terms al-khafḍ al-ʾaṣghar and al-khafḍ al-ʾakbar appear to be referring to a (...)
al-rafʿ al-kabīr ‘big rafʿ’ = ḥolem
al-rafʿ al-ʾaṣghar ‘smaller raising’ = shureq
al-naṣb al-ʾakbar ‘greater naṣb’ = qameṣ
al-naṣb al-ʾawsaṭ ‘intermediate naṣb’ = pataḥ
al-naṣb al-ʾaṣghar ‘smaller naṣb’ = segol
al-khafḍ al-ʾaṣghar ‘smaller khafḍ’ = ṣere
al-khafḍ al-ʾakbar ‘greater khafḍ’ = ḥireq55
- 56 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.3.– §II.L.2.8.
44Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ makes a similar classification, using both the names of Arabic case vowels (naṣb, khafḍ, rafʿ) and also the generic names of Arabic vowels (fatḥa, kasra, ḍamma). The Hebrew vowels pataḥ, segol and qameṣ, for example, are identified as variant types of fatḥa, which are termed ‘big fatḥa’, ‘medium fatḥa’ and ‘small fatḥa’ respectively. This does not correspond to Saadya’s classification of degrees of height but rather relates to varying degrees of lip-spreading. The vowel pataḥ was pronounced with the maximal degree of lip-spreading and qameṣ with the lowest degree, with segol exhibiting an intermediate lip position.56
- 57 Cf. Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb (ed. H. Derenbourg 1889, 452–53).
45The basic Arabic vowel qualities a, i and u are also associated with the Arabic vowel letters ʾalif, yāʾ and wāw. Any other qualities of Arabic vowels were variations (furūʿ) of these basic qualities, e.g. [ɛ] was termed ʾalif mumāla ‘inclining ʾalif’ (i.e. inclining towards i) and [ɑ] or [ɔ] ʾalif al-tafkhīm ‘ʾalif of thickness’.57 The three-way classification of Tiberian vowel qualities also corresponds to the three Arabic matres lectionis ʾalif, yāʾ and wāw that are the normal transcription of the vowels of these three categories respectively in the Karaite transcriptions, viz. ʾalif = pataḥ, qameṣ, segol, yāʾ = ṣere, ḥireq and wāw = shureq/qibbuṣ, ḥolem.
- 58 See Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.4.2.
- 59 Eldar (1994, 102–5).
46Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ correlates these groups of vowels with the Hebrew vowel letters (i) ʾalef/he, (ii) yod and (iii) vav when the vowels were pronounced long.58 This reflects the theory that long vowels were the result of ‘soft letters’ (ḥurūf al-līn), i.e. vowel letters. This theory was borrowed from the Arabic grammatical tradition and developed more systematically by the Hebrew grammarian ḥayyūj (Spain, early eleventh century). Unlike in Arabic, these vowel letters were sometimes elided in the orthography, especially those of group (i).59
I.2.2. Vowel Length
I.2.2.1. General Principles
47The length of vowels represented by the basic vowel signs (i.e. vowel signs that are not combined with shewa) is to a large extent predictable from syllable structure and the placement of stress. The general principles are as follows:
Vowels represented by basic vowel signs are long when they are either (i) in a stressed syllable or (ii) in an unstressed open syllable.
Vowels represented by basic signs that are in an unstressed closed syllable are short.
Examples: [ˈmƐːlƐχ] ‘king’,
[ˈnaːʕɑR̟] ‘youth’,
[ħɔχˈmɔː] ‘wisdom’,
[haːˈhuː] ‘that’,
[yaːʕaˈlƐː] ‘he goes up’,
[∫iːˈħeːθuː] ‘they have ruined’ (Nah. 2.3), ּ
[bƐːR̟Ɛχˈjɔːhuː] ‘Berechiah’ (1 Chron. 2.24).
- 60 In Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, for example, it is stated that the pronunciation of the stressed pataḥ in wor (...)
48These principles are clearly reflected by the Karaite transcriptions, which represent long vowels with Arabic matres lectionis. They are also referred to in various other medieval sources.60 Examples from the Karaite transcriptions are presented below.
When a long vowel occurs in a closed syllable, an epenthetic vowel is inserted after the long vowel before the syllable-final consonant, e.g. and
should be represented as [dɔːˈvɔːɔR̟] and [∫ɔːˈmɑːɑR̟] respectively. This feature of syllable structure is discussed in detail in §I.2.4.
I.2.2.2. Stressed Syllables
49(marked by shading in the roman phonetic transcription)
Qameṣ
(Gen. 21.7 ‘Sarah’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 63r, 1)
(Gen. 22.1 ‘he tempted’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 66r, 7)
(Gen. 21.11 ‘the word’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 63r, 8)
(Gen. 21.11 ‘Abraham’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 63r, 8)
Pataḥ
(Gen. 21.8 ‘and he made’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 63r, 3)
(Gen. 21.17 ‘the boy’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 64r, 5)
(Gen. 21.15 ‘the water’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 64r, 1)
(Gen. 21.8 ‘and he was weaned’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 63r, 2)
(Gen. 22.13 ‘in the thicket’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 68r, 3)
Segol
(Psa. 52.9 ‘the man’) —
(BL Or 2551 fol. 9v, 3)
(Isa. 26.17 ‘before you’) —
(BL Or 2548 fol. 186r, 4)
(Gen. 21.8 ‘feast’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 63r, 3)
ּ
(Ezek. 4.3 ‘iron’) —
(BL Or 2549 fol. 145r, 4)
(Exod. 3.16 ‘your fathers’) —
(BL Or 2544 fol. 77v, 8)
Ṣere
(Gen. 21.16 ‘and she sat’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 64r, 4)
(Gen. 21.8 ‘to be weaned’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 63r, 3)
(Gen. 21.10 ‘cast out!’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 63r, 6)
Ḥireq
(Deut. 21.4 ‘and they will bring down’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 105r, 7)
(Gen. 22.9 ‘and he built’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 67r, 9)
(Gen. 15.4 ‘if’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 58r, 4)
(Exod. 2.7 ‘from’) —
(BL Or 2540, fol. 6r, 4)
Ḥolem
(Gen. 21.22 ‘his host’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 64v, 9)
(Exod. 3.3 ‘the great’) —
(BL Or 2544 fol. 74v, 2)
(Gen. 24.53 ‘precious things’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 76v, 4)
Shureq/qibbuṣ
(Gen. 22.19 ‘and they rose up’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 68v, 6)
(Psa. 78.54 ‘border of’) —
(BL Or 2551 fol. 32v, 13)
(Jer. 2.22 ‘utterance of’) —
(BL Or 2549 fol. 3v, 12)
(Deut. 4.28 ‘and they (mp) will smell’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 87v, 4)
I.2.2.3. Open Unstressed Syllables
50(marked by shading in the roman phonetic transcription)
Qameṣ
(Exod. 3.3 ‘the great’) —
(BL Or 2544 fol. 74v, 2)
(Jer. 31.38 ‘days’) — (BL Or 2549 fol. 93v, 8)
(Gen. 21.12 ‘in your (ms) eyes’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 63v, 2)
Pataḥ
(Gen. 21.22 ‘that’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 64v, 8)
(Gen. 21.23 ‘like the kindness’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 65r, 3)
(Neh. 9.1 ‘of the month’) —
(BL Or 2556, fol. 52v, 8)
Segol
(Num. 14.43 ‘by the sword’) —
(Genizah MS 1, Khan 1990a, 26)
(Isa. 27.10 ‘forsaken’) —
(BL Or 2548 fol. 187r, 12)
(Num. 15.24 ‘it [f] was done’) —
(Genizah MS 1, Khan 1990a, 27)
Ṣere
(Num. 14.27 ‘for the congregation’) —
(Genizah MS 1, Khan 1990a, 23)
(Exod. 3.11 ‘I will go’) — (BL Or 2540, fol. 9r, 1)
Ḥireq
(Deut. 23.11 ‘from outside’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 113v, 5)
(Gen. 14.23 ‘from a thread’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 57r, 8)
Ḥolem
(Gen. 21.22 ‘God’) — (BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 65r, 1)
(Jer. 25.1 ‘the first’) —
(BL Or 2543 MS A, fol. 5v, 2)
Shureq/qibbuṣ
(Exod. 1.2 ‘Reuben’) —
(BL Or 2540, fol. 3v, 2)
(Josh. 4.12 ‘those who are armed’) —
(BL Or 2547 fol. 6v, 12)
(Job. 41.1 ‘he will be hurled down’) —
(BL Or 2552 fol. 85v, 4)
(Jer. 24.1 ‘baskets of’) —
(BL Or 2543 MS A, fol. 3r, 8)
(Exod. 1.13 ‘and they made to serve’) —
(BL Or 2540, fol. 4v, 2)
I.2.2.4. Closed Unstressed Syllables
51(marked by shading in the roman phonetic transcription)
Qameṣ61
- 61 The distinction between long and short qameṣ is expressed by the terms qameṣ gadol and qameṣ ḥaṭef(...)
(Num. 18.32 ‘the holy gifts of’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS B, fol. 126v, 12)
(Isa. 38.17 ‘all’) — (BL Or 2548 fol. 32r, 12)
(Num. 20.1 ‘she died’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS B, fol. 128r, 10)
Pataḥ
(Jer. 26.3 ‘and I will repent’) —
(BL Or 2543 MS A, fol. 8r, 5)
(Jer. 23.32 ‘this’) — (BL Or 2543 MS A, fol. 2r, 7)
Segol
ּ
(Gen. 21.23 ‘to my posterity’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 65r, 3)
(Gen. 21.23 ‘like the kindness’) —
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 65r, 3)
Ḥireq
(Gen. 21.8 ‘feast’) — (BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 63r, 3)
(Gen. 22.13 ‘ram’) — (BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 68r, 2)
Shureq/qibbuṣ
(Exod. 25.30 ‘the table’) —
(BL Or 2544, fol. 125r, 5)
(Exod. 5.14 ‘and they were beaten’) —
(BL Or 2540, fol. 14v, 6)
The vowels ḥolem and ṣere are invariably long and have no short variants. This also is essentially dependent on stress and syllable structure, in that they occur only in the aforementioned environments that condition vowel length, e.g. [meːˈviː] ‘brings’,
[∫aˈθeː] ‘drink! ’,
[ma̟qoːˈmoː] ‘his place’.
I.2.3. Vowel Phonemes
- 62 For an alternative analysis of the phonemes of Tiberian Hebrew based on the phonetic realizations (...)
52In order to establish the synchronic phonological representation of the vowels of the Tiberian reading tradition one must distinguish between (i) vowels which are invariably long and include length in their underlying phonological representation and (ii) vowels whose length is determined by syllable structure and stress so are of unspecified length at a phonological level (Khan 2013g).62
I.2.3.1. Vowel Phonemes with a Specified Length Feature
53The long vowel phonemes with a length feature specified in their underlying representation include: long qameṣ /ɔ̄/, ḥolem /ō/, ṣere /ē/, long shureq /ū/, long ḥireq /ī/ (typically written with yod), e.g.
/∫ɔ̄θɔ̄/ [∫ɔːˈθɔː] ‘he drank’
/ʕēðɔ̄/ [ʕeːˈðɔː] ‘community’
ּ/bēθō/ [beːˈθoː] ‘his house’
/̟qūmū/ [ˈ̟quːmuː] ‘arise! ’
/jīrɔ̄/ [jiːˈR̟ɔː] ‘he fears’
I.2.3.2. Vowel Phonemes without a Specified Length Feature
54The vowel phonemes unspecified as to length include: pataḥ /a/, segol /Ɛ/, ḥireq /i/, qibbuṣ/shureq /u/. In principle, these are long when they bear stress, e.g.
/ʕɔ̄mað/ [ʕɔːˈmaːað] ‘he stood’
/lɔ̄hƐm/ [lɔːˈhƐːƐm] ‘to them’
/min/ [ˈmiːin] ‘from’
55The length of the vowel, therefore, is a phonetic phenomenon induced by stress and is not a feature of the underlying vowel phoneme.
56As shown above, vowels of this category represented by basic vowel signs that occur in unstressed closed syllables are short, whereas those that occur in open unstressed syllables are realized as long.
An open syllable with a long vowel (CV̄) can be considered to have the same weight as a closed syllable with a short vowel (CVC). Their codas both contain two weight components, known as morae, and both types of syllable are termed bimoraic. Bimoricity is, in fact, not obligatory in open syllables. There are some cases of short lexical vowels in open unstressed syllables, mainly rounded vowels with the quality of qameṣ, indicated in the vocalization by ḥaṭef qameṣ, e.g. [sˁɔˈR̟iː] ‘balm’,
[dɔˈmiː] ‘silence’ (§I.2.7.). The lengthening of the vowels of unspecified length in open syllables must, therefore, be conditioned by factors other than the need to conform to a principle of canonical bimoricity.
57One subset of vowels of this category that are lengthened in open syllables occur before gutturals that were historically geminated, but have now lost their gemination. In traditional descriptions of Hebrew, this is referred to as ‘virtual doubling’ of the guttural, i.e. the vowel is the type one would expect in a syllable closed by gemination of the following consonant. The phonetically long realization of the vowel can be explained as having arisen due to spreading of the vowel in compensation for the lost gemination. This can be represented as the replication of the phoneme thus:
*/hahhū/ > /haahū/ [haːˈhuː]
‘that’
*/∫iħħēθū / > /∫iiħēθū/ [∫iːˈħeːθuː]
‘they have ruined’ (Nah. 2.3),
This can be regarded as a morphologically motivated replication of the vowel, in order to bring the morphological pattern of a word or prefixed particle (definite article or preposition) into line with the pattern of these forms in other contexts, in which they are typically followed by a geminated consonant, e.g. /habbajiθ/ ‘the house’,
/mippʰō/ ‘from here’,
/∫ibber/ ‘he shattered’, or have a long vowel phoneme, e.g.
/hɔ̄ʕɔ̄m/ ‘the people’,
/mēʕīr/ ‘from the city of’, /mēʔēn/ ‘he refused’.
A second subset of vowels of this category that are lengthened in open syllables occur before gutturals with a ḥaṭef vowel, e.g. ‘they go up’,
‘he brought up’,
‘noon’. Here the lengthening is conditioned by metrical factors. This will be discussed below (§I.2.5.4.).
A third, marginal, subset of vowels of this category that are lengthened in open syllables occur in segolate forms that do not bear the main stress, e.g. [bƐːR̟Ɛχˈjɔːhuː] ‘Berechiah’ (1 Chron. 2.24). This also appears to have a metrical motivation (§I.2.6.).
To the category of vowel phonemes that lack a specified length feature we should add also /e/ and /o/. These are represented by the ṣere and ḥolem vowel signs respectively in the stressed syllable of certain forms. Since stressed vowels are always long, on a phonetic level these are not distinguishable from ṣere and ḥolem representing phonemes with underlying length. This is necessary to account for apparent discrepancies in the historical development of vowels in several morphological forms, in which pataḥ (a vowel with no specified length feature) occurs in parallel with ṣere and ḥolem (Sarauw 1939, 56–64; Khan 1994). This applies, for example, to nouns with an originally doubled final consonant. In forms deriving from the *qall pattern the vowel is pataḥ, e.g. [ˈR̟ɑːɑv] ‘much’, and in forms deriving from the *qill and *qull pattern, the vowel is ṣere and ḥolem respectively, e.g.
[ˈleːev] ‘heart’,
[ˈʕoːoz] ‘strength’. Such words would all have a vowel of unspecified length on the phonological level /rav/, /lev/, /ʕoz/ and the length would have been a consequence of stress. There is, therefore, no discrepancy in their pattern. The same applies to the underlying phonological representation of the pataḥ, ṣere and ḥolem in verbal forms of the patterns
and in segolate nouns of the patterns
[pausal form], which would have the phonemes /a/, /e/ and /o/ respectively:
- 63 The second vowel in segolates is epenthetic and does not appear in the underlying phonological for (...)
/ʕɔ̄mað/ [ʕɔːˈmaːað] ‘he stood’
/kʰɔ̄veð/ [kʰɔːˈveːeð] ‘it became heavy’
/̟qɔ̄tˁon/ [̟qɔːˈtˁoːon] ‘it became small’
/ji∫kʰav/ [ji∫ˈkʰaːav] ‘he lies down’
/jittʰen/ [jitˈtʰeːen] ‘he gives’
/ji∫ˈmoːR̟/ [ji∫ˈmoːoR̟] ‘he guards’
/naʕr/ [ˈnɑːʕɑR̟]63 ‘youth’
/sefr/ [ˈseːfƐR̟] ‘book’
/̟qoð∫/ [ˈ̟qoːðƐ∫] ‘holiness’
/ħoly/ [ˈħoːliː] ‘sickness’
58In syllables that do not have the main stress, the vowels /e/ and /o/ are generally realized phonetically as [Ɛ] or [ɔ] respectively, which overlap in quality with the phonemes /Ɛ/ and /ɔ̄/, e.g.
/vajjēreð/ [vaɟˈɟeːR̟Ɛð] ‘and he came down’
/qoð∫ō/ [qɔðˈ∫oː] ‘his holiness’
/ħoly/ [ħɔˈliː] ‘sickness’
/qoðɔ̄ˈ∫īm/ [qɔðɔːˈ∫iːim]
A secondary stress may be marked on short [ɔ], and in such cases it is generally lengthened to [ɔː] rather than [oː], as in [ˌqɔːðɔːˈ∫iːim] ‘holinesses’ (Exod. 29.37).
- 64 These are listed in Masoretic treatises, e.g. Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, sections 6-8), H (...)
There are some marginal cases in the Tiberian tradition where short [ɛ] and short [ɔ] are realized as [ɛː] and [ɔː], rather than [eː] and [oː], with the main stress of an accent. The accent in such cases is usually a conjunctive, though sporadic cases of disjunctives are attested, e.g. seven cases of ‘son’ (Gen. 17.17, Lev. 1.5, Lev. 24.10 [disjunctive yetiv], Isa. 8.2, Esther 2.5, 1 Chron. 9.21, Neh. 6.18), three cases of
object marker/‘with’ (Psa. 47.5, Psa. 60.2, Prov. 3.12) and at least two cases of
‘all’ (Psa. 35.10, Prov. 19.7),64 e.g.
(Esther 2.5 ‘son of Yair’)
(Psa. 60.2 ‘with Aram-naharaim’)
(Prov. 19.7 ‘all the brothers of a poor man’)
59This phenomenon is likely to be due to the fact that, in the Tiberian prosodic chant, words that were originally unstressed in an earlier form of the reading tradition were occasionally assigned an accent. Such prosodic ‘transformations’, according to DeCaen and Dresher (2020), occurred due to the length of a verse and the desire to slow down the chant.
60Conversely there are a few sporadic cases of /o/ and /e/ realised with the qualities of [oː] and [eː] in syllables two syllables back from the main stress that may be considered to be the result of lengthening by a secondary stress (§I.2.8.2.), although this is not always indicated by the accentuation, e.g.
[ˌʔoːhɔːˈliːim] (Gen. 25.27 ‘tents’); cf. singular
/ʾohl/ (see §I.2.6. for further details concerning the underlying form)
[ˌheːʕaˈluː] (Hab. 1.15 ‘he has brought up’) (see §I.2.5.4. for further details concerning the underlying form)
- 65 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
Vowel phonemes without a specified length feature in their underlying form, which have been lengthened through stress or compensatory reduplication (e.g. /haahū/ [haːˈhuː] ), are vowels that appear to have acquired phonetic length relatively late in the history of the Tiberian tradition. In the Greek transcriptions of the Hexapla of Origen (c. 185–254 C.E.) they are still represented as short where length distinctions could be made in Greek, viz. between the short and long ‘e’ and ‘o’ vowels (Khan 1994). Where Tiberian had lengthened /e/ [eː] and lengthened /o/ [oː], the Hexapla generally has ε and ο respectively, which represented short ‘e’ and ‘o’, as opposed to η and ω, which represented long ‘e’ and ‘o’. Examples:65
61Verbal forms
ααλλελ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 89.35 ‘I will [not] profane’)
ουϊεθθεν (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.33 ‘and he set’)
ουβαρεχ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 28.9 ‘and bless! (ms)’)
ουϰ*σσες (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 46.10 ‘and [he] shatters’)
ιδαββερ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 49.4 ‘ [my mouth] will speak’)
ιμαλλετ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 89.49 ‘ [he] will rescue’)
εχαζεβ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 89.36 ‘I will lie’)
εεζεϰ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 35.2 ‘take hold of! (ms)’)
ερδοϕ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.38 ‘I chase’)
ιαδομ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 30.13 ‘ [it will not] be silent’)
ισροϕ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 46.10 ‘ [he] burns’)
ηζχορ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 89.51 ‘remember! (ms)’)
62*qill and *qull nominal forms
λεβ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 32.11 ‘heart’)
εμ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 35.14 ‘mother’)
βαες (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 46.10 ‘with fire’)
οζ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 30.8 ‘strength’)
λαχολ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.31 ‘for all)
63Segolate forms
ιεθερ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 31.24 ‘remainder/abundance’)
ρεγε (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 30.6 ‘a moment’)
ϰεσθ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.35 ‘bow of (cstr.)’)
μενεγδ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 31.23 ‘from before’)
δερχ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 89.42 ‘ (the) way’)
βεχι (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 30.6 ‘weeping’)
βοϰρ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 46.6 ‘morning’)
ϰορ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 49.1 ‘Korah’)
64Contrast other adjectival and nominal forms, which have η, representing long ‘e’, as the counterpart of Tiberian ṣere, and ω, representing long ‘o’, as the counterpart of Tiberian ḥolem, e.g.
αηλ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.31 ‘God’)
εϰϰης (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.27 ‘crooked’)
ϰωλ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 28.6 ‘voice’)
μαζμωρ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 31.1 ‘melody/psalm’)
ϕεδιων (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 49.9 ‘the redemption of (cstr.)’)
65The counterpart of stressed ṣere and ḥolem in most verbal forms that are pausal in the Tiberian tradition are transcribed by the long vowels η and ω respectively in the Hexapla, e.g.
θηληχ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 32.8 ‘you go’)
ιησηβ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 9.8 ‘he sits’)
ιδαββηροθ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 35.20 ‘the speak’)
ιαλληλου (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 89.32 ‘they violate’)
ιεσμωρου (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 89.32 ‘they (do not) keep’)
66This evidence supports the assumption that the ṣere and ḥolem in such forms are the phonemes /ē/ and /ō/ with a length feature. Segolate nouns and nouns with the historical pattern *qill and *qull that are pausal in Tiberian tradition, by contrast, are transcribed in the Hexapla with ε and ο (see the lists above).
There is one possible case in the Hexapla corresponding to forms such as ‘he was comforted’
‘outside’ with ‘virtual doubling’ of the guttural. The case in question is the following:
μερεσθ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 31.5 ‘from (the) net’)
Here the resh has lost its gemination and the transcription represents the preceding vowel as short. This form is interpreted by Kantor (2017, 223) as equivalent to forms with ḥireq in Tiberian such as i.e. the forebear of a hypothetical form
If this is correct, this would be evidence that the vowel before ‘virtual doubling’ that we are proposing was a vowel phoneme without a specified length feature in Tiberian was represented as short in the Hexapla like other vowels of this category.
I.2.4. Long Vowels in Closed Syllables
67When long vowels with the main stress occur in closed syllables, there is evidence that an epenthetic with the same quality as that of the long vowel occurred before the final consonant in its phonetic realization, e.g. (syllable boundaries are marked by dots):
/̟qōl/ [ˈ̟qoː.ol] ‘voice’
/jɔ̄ð/ [ˈjɔː.ɔð] ‘hand’
/lɔ̟̄qūm/ [lɔː.ˈ̟quː.um] ‘to rise’
/hi∫mīð/ [hi∫.ˈmiː.ið] ‘he destroyed’
ּ/bēθ/ [ˈbeː.eθ] ‘house of’
68This syllable split on the phonetic level was not represented in the vocalization notation since it did not change the vowel quality. On account of the lack of change in phonetic quality across the syllable boundary the epenthetic syllable could not have been very distinct perceptually.
- 66 The splitting of a long vowel into two syllable nuclei is a phenomenon that is attested in the Sam (...)
The most compelling evidence for the insertion of an epenthetic in a closed syllable with a long vowel phoneme is the so-called furtive pataḥ, e.g. [ˈR̟uː.aħ] ‘spirit’. This short [a] vowel is to be interpreted as the epenthetic vowel, which has shifted quality through assimilation to the vocal tract configuration of the following laryngeal or pharyngeal. If the whole of the vowel nucleus were a unitary long vowel in the same syllable, one would have expected the assimilation to affect it as a unit.66
69The occurrence of this epenthesis appears to reflect a constraint against syllables heavier than two morae. An open syllable with a long vowel (CV̄) and a closed syllable with a short vowel (CVC) are bimoraic, i.e. they have two morae in their codas, whereas a closed syllable with a long vowel (CV̄C) would have three morae. The constraint causes the CV̄C syllable to be broken into two bimoraic syllables on the phonetic level CV̄. VC.
70The underlying syllable structure of a word such as ק ֹ לו could be represented thus: /̟qō.l/, with a stray extrasyllabic consonant. This follows from the assumption that the epenthetic vowel must have been added at the phonetic level and the aforementioned constraint against superheavy syllables must have existed also at the underlying level. Following the analysis by Kiparsky (2003) of Arabic syllable structure, we may say that such unsyllabifiable consonants at the underlying level, or ‘word-level’ according to Kiparsky’s terminology, are licensed by morae adjoined to the higher node of the prosodic word rather than the syllable node. Kiparsky refers to these consonants as ‘semisyllables’. In the following tree ω = prosodic word, σ = syllable, and μ = mora:
71We may postulate that the epenthetic is added at the phonetic level, or ‘post-lexical level’ according to the terminology of lexical semantics used by Kiparsky, to turn the semisyllable into a syllable, i.e. /qō.l/ [qoː.ol], since in Tiberian Hebrew semisyllables were not allowed at the phonetic level. The underlying syllable structure of the other examples given above would, therefore, be /jɔ̄.ð/, /lɔ̄.̟qū.m/, /hi∫.mī.ð/ and /bē.θ/.
- 67 J. McCarthy (1979, 155) also proposed that such syllables were feet containing ‘two rhyme nodes’, (...)
72It will be argued (§I.2.6.) that in the metrical parsing the epenthetic in the phonetic syllable structure of a word such as [ˈ̟qoː.ol] belonged together with the preceding long vowel in the same prosodic foot.67 This foot would have consisted of a trochaic metrical pattern with a strong syllable followed by a weak epenthetic syllable. This can be represented as follows, where brackets enclose the foot and * = strong beat:
[ˈ̟qoː.ol]
(* .)
In the examples given above of epenthesis the closed syllables have a vowel phoneme with inherent length. There are some words with furtive pataḥ in a word-final stressed closed syllable that, according to their etymology, would be expected to have an underlying vowel phoneme without a length specification. This applies to the *qull noun forms [ˈR̟oːaʕ] ‘badness’ (< *ruʿʿ, root
) and
[ˈmoːaħ] ‘marrow’ (< *muḥḥ, root
). The constraint against syllables heavier than two morae and the splitting of the final consonant from the rest of the syllable would have operated here at the phonetic level only after the phoneme had been lengthened at the phonetic level by stress, i.e. /roʕ/ [ˈR̟oː.aʕ]. We should analyse, therefore, the syllable structure of short vowel phonemes that are lengthened by stress in syllables without a furtive pataḥ as having epenthetic vowels with the same quality of the vowel on the phonetic level, thus:
/ʕɔ̄.mað/ [ʕɔː.ˈmaː.að]
/lɔ̄.χƐm/ [lɔː.ˈχƐː. Ɛm]
/ʕoz/ [ˈʕoː.oz]
/lev/ [ˈleː.ev]
73The existence of the vowel split on the phonetic level in closed syllables with a long vowel is also reflected by the phenomenon of nesiga. This is a metrical measure to avoid the clash of two accents, whereby the stress represented by a conjunctive accent in the first of a sequence of two words is retracted when the second word has initial stress (Praetorius 1897; Revell 1983; Yeivin 1980, 236–40). It most regularly occurs when the first word ends in an open syllable or else a closed syllable that contains a vowel phoneme without a length specification, in particular pataḥ and segol, e.g.
(Psa. 65.10 ‘full of water’)
(Gen. 39.14 ‘he has brought for us’)
(Gen. 3.19 ‘you will eat bread’)
( 1 Sam. 25.3 ‘beautiful of form)
(Jud. 9.16 ‘you have done to him’)
74The accent is in principle not retracted when it falls on a closed syllable containing a long vowel phoneme, e.g.
(Gen. 27.5 ‘to hunt for game’)
(Zech. 9.12 ‘I will restore to you’)
(Psa. 74.8 ‘we will oppress them together’)
(Isa. 1.7 ‘burnt by fire’)
( 1 Kings 17.19 ‘he is dwelling there’)
75Praetorius (1897, 16) already suggested that the long vowels in stressed closed syllables that fell adjacent to another stressed syllable, as in the examples cited above, had an accent with ‘two peaks’, which tended to split it into a disyllable. According to our formulation, this second syllable can be identified as the result of the insertion of an epenthetic vowel, and this would have acted as a buffer between the two stresses, thus rendering nesiga unnecessary:
[lɔː.ˈsˁuː.uð ˈsˁɑː.jið].
76Likewise, the accent is not retracted from the final syllable when the epenthetic vowel is clearly discernible in the form of a furtive pataḥ, e.g.
(Exod. 30.38 ‘to smell it’)
We have seen that nesiga takes place when a vowel phoneme without a length specification occurs in a final closed syllable, e.g. (Gen. 3.19). When stressed, such a vowel would be phonetically long and split by an epenthetic, which would have rendered retraction unnecessary. The fact that nesiga does take place is most easily explained as reflecting that the retraction took place at an earlier historical period, when vowels that are phonemes with unspecified length in the Tiberian tradition were still pronounced short when stressed. The position of the accents would have been fixed at this period.
77There is a considerable degree of variation in the occurrence of nesiga when a word-final closed syllable contains ṣere. Some of this variation reflects the fact that ṣere is the realization either of a long vowel phoneme /ē/ or of the vowel phoneme /e/ of unspecified length that is lengthened by stress. Retraction often takes place when the ṣere belongs to the latter category, as one would expect from the discussion above. This is the case, for example, in verbal inflections. Since the /e/ phoneme is not stressed, it has the allophone [ɛ], which is represented by segol, e.g.
(Cant. 4.6 ‘I go’)
(Zech. 13.8 ‘it will be left in it)
(Hos. 9.2 ‘it will fail them’)
78In some cases, there is retraction of an accent on ṣere in a closed syllable even where it would be expected to be a long /ē/ phoneme. This is found especially in participles, which are nominal forms. When this occurs, the ṣere remains long (generally indicated by a gaʿya), since its length is not dependent on stress, e.g.
(Prov. 12.1 ‘loves knowledge’)
(Jud. 8.10 ‘drawing a sword’)
(Isa. 49.7 ‘one abhorred by the nations’)
79Retraction even takes place in such forms where the ṣere occurs before a guttural and has a furtive pataḥ, e.g.
(Isa. 63.12 ‘cleaving the waters’)
(Prov. 11.26 ‘one who holds back grain’)
- 68 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
80This retraction in forms with a long /ē/ phoneme in participles may be due to analogy with the retraction in verbal forms with ṣere, where the ṣere is a realization of the phoneme /e/ without a specified length feature. It is significant to note that the vowel corresponding to the ṣere in the final syllable of participles in the Greek transcriptions of the Hexapla is normally η, which represents a long vowel, but in one case ε, which represents a short vowel, e.g.68
αννωθην (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.48 ‘the one who gives’)
νωσηρ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 31.24 ‘preserving’)
ωζηρ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 30.11 ‘helper’)
ααϕης (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 35.27 ‘the one who delights’)
μαλαμμεδ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.35 ‘trains (ms)’)
- 69 Yuditsky (2017, 153–54) and Brønno (1943, 260) argue that the short vowel is because the form is i (...)
81In the Hexapla, ε is the counterpart of Tiberian ṣere also in verbal forms (§I.2.3.2.). This isolated use of ε in a participle may likewise reflect the fact that the vowel has undergone partial analogical levelling with that of the verbal inflections.69 Other nominal and adjectival forms regularly have η, representing long ‘e’, as a counterpart of ṣere in the Tiberian tradition, e.g.
αηλ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.31 ‘God’)
εϰϰης (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.27 ‘crooked’)
- 70 See the sources cited by Roman (1983, 720–21).
- 71 See Roman (1983, 722-23).
- 72 Roman (1983, 723).
- 73 For the hamza bayna bayna see Roman (1983, 333).
82A typological parallel to the hypothesized insertion of an epenthetic vowel in closed syllables containing a long vowel in Tiberian Hebrew existed in Classical Arabic. According to the medieval Arabic grammars and works on the recitation of the Qurʾān, when a long vowel occurred in a closed syllable on account of a subsequent geminated consonant, e.g. šābbatun ‘young woman’, qūṣṣa ‘he was avenged’, the long vowel was pronounced longer than a long vowel in an open syllables.70 The grammarian Ibn Jinnī in his work al-Khaṣāʾiṣ states that this phenomenon arose from the fact that syllables such as šāb and qūṣ contained the inadmissible sequence of two quiescent letters. In the Arabic grammatical tradition, a long vowel was thought to consist of a short vowel + quiescent letter of extension (ḥarf al-madd) or ‘soft’ letter (ḥarf al-lin), i.e. šā ( اش ) would be analysed as šīn + a + quiescent soft ʾalif. This theory was introduced into the medieval tradition of Hebrew grammar by ḥayyūj. The extra length of the vowel in closed syllables is said by Ibn Jinnī to have occurred ‘as a substitute for the short vowel that is necessitated by the clustering of two quiescent letters’.71 The Arabist André Roman has proposed that the syllable structure described by Ibn Jinnī should be represented as šaa-ab etc.,72 i.e. the overlong syllable is split by an epenthetic vowel of the same quality as the preceding long vowel. This sequence of long vowel + epenthetic would have been perceived as an extra-long unitary vowel. Roman suggests that the onset of the syllable of the epenthetic vowel was constituted by a light constriction of the vocal folds. This form of syllable onset was attested elsewhere as a weak variant of the glottal stop (hamza), called by Sībawaihi hamza bayna bayna (‘sound between hamza and zero’). Although the virtually null articulation of the hamza bayna bayna was, in effect, simultaneous with the beginning of the subsequent vowel, it formed sufficient division between two vowels for the resultant structure to be scanned as two syllables in poetry.73
83It is reasonable to assume that the onset of the phonetic syllable arising from the insertion of the epenthetic after a long vowel in closed syllables in the Tiberian reading tradition of Hebrew was analogous to the Classical Arabic hamza bayna bayna, i.e. a very light constriction of the vocal folds. As in Arabic, this would have been hardly perceptible but nonetheless sufficient to mark a syllabic boundary for metrical purposes.
84When the epenthetic in such syllables in the Tiberian tradition was a furtive pataḥ, the onset of the phonetic syllable containing the epenthetic would have been a glide homorganic with the quality of the preceding vowel. The medieval Karaite lexicographer al-Fāsī refers to the existence of a bilabial glide in words in which the vowel before the furtive pataḥ is shureq or ḥolem:
85Glides before furtive pataḥ are mentioned also in a Genizah fragment of a Masoretic treatise:
If one of the letters ח , ה or ע occurs at the end of a word and under the letter before it there is either ִַ א or ֵַ א , then they are separated by י ַ א (i.e. [ja]), as in
‘and he heard’,
‘joyful’,
‘flourishing’,
‘causing to hear’. Ifֹ ֹ א is over it, they are separated by ו ַ א (i.e. [wa]), as
- 75 75 CUL T-S NS 301.32:
in
‘hearing’,
‘fragrant’, and it
occurs, cases such as
‘Joshua’.75
Such a glide is the result of a slight dip in the sonority of the preceding vowel. This can be represented in the phonetic transcription of a word such as thus: [ˈR̟uːwaħ]. A word with a ḥireq or ṣere before furtive pataḥ can be represented with a palatal glide thus:
[ˈsiːjaħ] ‘plant’.
86In most modern reading traditions in Arabic-speaking Jewish communities the glide before the furtive pataḥ is geminated (Morag 1952), e.g.
87Baghdad
jesoˈḥejjaḥ (Morag 1977, 55 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 53.8 ‘ [who] considers…?’)
ˈruːwwaḥ (Morag 1977, 55 | L [BHS]:
Ecc. 11.4 ‘spirit’)
88Jerba
haˈreˑjˌjaʕ (Katz 1977, 87 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 1.16 ‘doing evil’)
ˈruwwaḥ (Katz 1977, 87 | L [BHS]:
Deut. 34.9 ‘spirit of’)
89In some traditions, the gemination of the glide alternates with the lack of it, e.g.
90Yemen
rejjaħ ˜ reːjaħ (Morag 1963, 134 | L [BHS]:
Cant. 2.13 ‘fragrance’)
jaʤʤijjah ˜ jaʤʤiːjah (Morag 1963, 134 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 13.10 ‘ [he] will lighten’)
nɞwwaħ ˜ nɞːwaħ (Morag 1963, 134 |
‘Noah’)
ruwwaħ ˜ ruːwaħ (Morag 1963, 134 |
‘spirit’)
91In some of the Karaite transcriptions, an Arabic shadda sign is written over the glide, indicating that it was read as geminated in some variations of the Tiberian tradition already in the Middle Ages, e.g.
(BL Or 2555 fol. 23r, 1 | L [BHS]:
Ecc. 4.4 ‘spirit’)
(BL Or 2555 fol. 86v, 10 | L [BHS]:
Ecc. 8.14 ‘that which reaches’)
(BL Or 2559, fol. 5v, 13 | L [BHS]:
Lev. 22.4 ‘whoever touches’)
- 76 Epstein (1950), Morag (1952, 236).
92It is attested also in some medieval manuscripts of Rabbinic Hebrew, e.g. ה ַ ט ִ יּ ַ ח (Mishnah, Kelim 5.10 ‘the plastering’).76
93The strengthening of the glide by gemination can be regarded as a measure to preserve it. It results in the fortition of the second vocalic mora of the preceding long [uː] or [iː] vowel, thus:
[Cuu] > [Cuw], e.g. [ˈR̟uːwaħ] > [ˈR̟uwwaħ]
[Cii] > [Cij], e.g. [magˈgiːjaʕ] > [magˈgijjaʕ]
94The geminated [j] would, according to the normal principles of Tiberian pronunciation be realized as [ɟɟ], so a more accurate transcription would be [magˈgiɟɟaʕ].
A similar type of gemination of glides is reflected in other contexts in the standard Tiberian vocalization, e.g. ( 1 Kings 11.17 ‘Edomites’), (Job 13.7 ‘deceit’),
(Esther 1.8 ‘and the drinking’). This too is likely to have developed as a measure to preserve the glide. The vulnerability of such glides is shown by gentilic forms such as
(Gen. 12.14 ‘the Egyptians’ < *hammiṣrīyīm).
95In the Samaritan reading tradition, gemination of the glides [w] and [j] is normal between vowels. In many such cases an original guttural has been lost between the vowels (Ben-ḥayyim 2000, 38–39), e.g.
muwwåb (
Gen. 19.37 ‘Moab’)
ʾēluwwəm (
Gen. 1.1 ‘God’)
ruwwi (
Gen. 6.3 ‘my spirit’)
miyyå̄dåm (
Gen. 6.7 ‘from man’)
miyyor (
Gen. 11.31 ‘from Ur’)
miyyēləb (
Gen. 49.12 ‘than milk’)
A possible example of the opposite process is the reading by Ben Naftali of the word (Exod. 19.13 ‘he will be shot’) as
without gemination of the second yod, which is reported in Kitāb al-Khilaf (ed. Lipschütz 1965,
). This would reflect an original [Cij] shifting to [Cii].
96In modern reading traditions in the Middle East, the furtive pataḥ often receives a secondary or, in some cases, a second main stress, e.g.
97Jerba
haˈreˑjˌjaʕ (Katz 1977, 87 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 1.16 ‘doing evil’)
ˌhoˈfeːjˈjaʕ (Katz 1977, 87 | L [BHS]:
Deut. 33.2 ‘he shone forth’)
98This phenomenon is reflected already in some Karaite transcriptions, in which the furtive pataḥ is represented by mater lectionis ʾalif, e.g.
(BL Or 2551 fol. 42r, 7 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 81.15 ‘I shall subdue’)
ه ֺ حﺎيخو ت ֺ خو ֣ حﺎي (BL Or 2551 fol. 66r, 3 | L [BHS]:
Lev. 19.17 ‘you shall surely rebuke’)
99It is likely that the purpose of this measure was to preserve the furtive pataḥ.
100In some manuscripts with Non-Standard Tiberian vocalization, a furtive pataḥ is not marked before a guttural where it occurs in standard Tiberian vocalization, e.g.
101Genizah manuscripts
(T-S A11.1, Blapp 2017, 48 | L [BHS]:
Job 39.5 ‘he has loosened’)
(T-S A11.1, Blapp 2017, 47 | L [BHS]:
Job 40.2 ‘he who reproves’)
(T-S A12.1, Blapp 2017, 71 | L [BHS]:
Ruth 2.10 ‘why?’)
(T-S A13.18, Blapp 2017, 125 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 89.11 ‘with an arm of’)
102European manuscripts
(Codex Reuchlinianus, Morag 1959, 233 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 18.9 ‘and to plant’)
(Codex Reuchlinianus, Morag 1959, 233 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 13.10 ‘it (does not) shine’)
(ASCAMO 57.2 v, Pilocane 2004, 29 | L [BHS]:
2 Sam. 9.13)
- 77 Morag (1959, 233), Katz (1977, 87), Bauer and Leander (1922, 112– 13).
103As can be seen, in some cases a shewa is marked on the final guttural, which is a common practice in Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts (§I.1.8., §I.1.16.). The vocalization, however, reflects the absence of furtive pataḥ. A furtive pataḥ is absent also in many manuscripts with Palestinian vocalization.77
104It is also omitted in some modern reading traditions of the Mishnah, e.g.
105Yemen
pɞːħeːħ (Morag 1963. 128 |
Mishnah, Megillah 4.6, ‘clad in rags (ms)’)
106The development of the furtive pataḥ after close ( [iː], [uː]) and close-mid ( [eː], [oː]) long vowels before gutturals in the Tiberian tradition was the result, as remarked above, of giving the epenthetic after the long vowel a quality that is compatible with the vocal tract configuration of the guttural. This is likely to have had the orthoepic motivation of increasing the perceptibility of the guttural in order to ensure that it was preserved in the reading. The reading traditions that lacked furtive pataḥ were more lax in the measures they took to preserve the gutturals in this respect. It is significant to note that the Samaritan tradition, which in its modern form has lost a large proportion of the gutturals, does not reflect the historical presence of a furtive pataḥ (Ben-ḥayyim 2000, 38–39), e.g.
wrū (BHS:
Gen. 1.2 ‘and the spirit of’)
zå̄ˈru (BHS:
Deut. 33.20 ‘arm’)
šū (BHS:
Gen. 38.2 ‘Shua’)
mazˈrī (BHS:
Gen. 1.11 ‘producing seed’)
ʾarqi (BHS:
Gen. 1.6 ‘expanse’)
I.2.5. Shewa and Ḥaṭef Vowels
I.2.5.1. Principles of Phonetic Realization and Graphical Marking
I.2.5.1.1. Default Realization of Shewa
- 78 Various other terms are used in the early sources to refer to the shewa sign, such as the Arabic t (...)
The shewa sign
in the Tiberian vocalization system was read either as a vowel or as zero.78 When shewa was read as vocalic, its quality in the Tiberian tradition was by default the same as that of the pataḥ vowel sign, i.e., the maximally low vowel [a], e.g.
[tʰaχasˈsƐː] ‘you (ms) cover’ (Job 21.26)
[maðabbaˈR̟iːim] ‘speaking’ (mpl) (Esther 2.14)
- 79 See, for example, Crosswhite (2000; 2001; 2004).
- 80 E.g. in the unstressed syllables of Belarussian: ˈkol ‘pole’ kaˈla ‘pole’ (genitive); ˈ∫ept ‘whis (...)
107This [a] vowel is the outcome of a type of vowel reduction. Vowel reduction processes cross-linguistically usually result in loss of prominence, involving centralization and truncating duration. It has been recognized, however, that in some languages reduction involves pushing the vowels to the edges of the vowel space.79 In some documented cases, this involves lowering vowels to [a], which is the vowel quality with the highest sonority.80 This can be regarded as a strategy for preventing loss of prominence and maintaining duration. Such a strategy would be compatible with the conservative nature and orthoepic tendencies of the Tiberian tradition.
108Other pre-modern traditions of Hebrew generally exhibit a less sonorous realization of vocalic shewa.
- 81 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
109In the Greek and Latin transcriptions, it is frequently represented as an [e] quality, e.g.81
110Septuagint
Γέραρα (Göttingen Septuagint | L [BHS]:
Gen. 26.1 ‘to Gerar’)
Νετωϕὰ (Göttingen Septuagint | L [BHS]:
Ezra 2.22 ‘Netopha’)
111Origen
γεδουδ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.30 ‘a troop’)
σερουϕα (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 18.31 ‘refined’)
112Jerome
bethula (Commentary on Isaiah, ed. Gryson, III.16.21 |
‘virgin’ [comments on Isa. 7.14])
mecchenaph (Commentary on Isaiah, ed. Gryson, VIII.7.11 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 24.16 ‘from the edge of’)
113In Origen, there is sometimes no vowel where Tiberian has a vocalic shewa, e.g.
βδαμι (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 30.10 ‘in my blood’)
ϕλαγαυ (Ambrosiana Palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 46.5 ‘its streams’)
- 82 Data supplied by Shai Heijmans.
In medieval Palestinian vocalization, an [e] (represented below by ) or [i] vowel (represented below by
) is often used where Tiberian and vocalic shewa, e.g.82
(T-S NS 249.6, Dietrich 1968, 78* | L [BHS]:
1 Chr 6.16 ‘of the resting of’)
(T-S 12.195, Kahle 1930, 84 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 55.11 ‘they will go round’)
114The older layers of the Babylonian vocalization tradition appear to reflect a tendency to have zero where Tiberian has vocalic shewa. This can be inferred, for example, from a vocalization such as the following (Yeivin 1985, §8.13):
[iːsoːð] (Yeivin 1985, §8.13 | L [BHS]:
Lev. 4.25 ‘the base of’)
115Here the yod is vocalized with ḥireq, which appears to have arisen due to the fact that this initial consonant clustered with the second consonant without an epenthetic [jsoːð] > [iːsoːð].
116A few modern reading traditions realize vocalic shewa as the sonorous [a] vowel, as in Tiberian, e.g.
117Yemen
[răfɔ.ˈim] (Yaʾakov 2013, 1014 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 26.19 ‘shades’)
[lăˈmaʕlɔ] (Yaʾakov 2013, 1014 | L [BHS]:
Ezra 9.6 ‘higher/above’)
118Western Kurdistan
Šalomo (Sabar 2013, 480 |
‘Solomon’)
našāma (Sabar 2013, 480 |
‘soul’)
119Eastern Kurdistan
tafillim (Sabar 2013, 481 |
‘phylacteries’)
barit mila (Sabar 2013, 481 |
‘circumcision’)
120Kerala (festive reading)
[gaːdoːˈloː] (Forsström 2013, 462 | L [BHS]:
‘large (fs)’ Esther 8.15)
[taˈxeːleːðeː] (Forsström 2013, 462 | L [BHS]:
‘blue’ Esther 8.15)
121In most Sefardi reading traditions vocalic shewa is realized higher in the region of [e], e.g.
122Baghdad
ˌmətteˈmol (Morag 1977, 67 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 21.29 ‘from yesterday)
123Jerba
ʔəgˌgedoˈlaː (Katz 1977, 101 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 14.31 ‘the big (fs)’)
124Aleppo
∫eˈneˑ (Katz 1981, 54 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 48.1 ‘years of’)
125Tripoli
šeˈlumu (Artom 1922, 6 |
‘Solomon’)
126Tunisia
weroxˈbu (Henshke 2013, 864 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 15.1 ‘and its rider’)
127Karaite traditions (Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Crimea and Istanbul)
bʲe-torat (Harviainen 2013, 457 | L [BHS]:
‘in the teaching of’ Psa. 119.1)
128Italy
metunim (Ryzhik 2013, 363 |
‘moderate’ (mpl))
129Kerala (regular reading)
[∫efiˈpon] (Forsström 2013, 461 | L [BHS]:
‘adder’ Gen. 49.17)
130In Morocco, vocalic shewa is frequently realized as the high vowel [i], e.g.
hagidulá (Akun 2010, 186 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 14.31 ‘the big (fs)’)
131Ashkenazi reading traditions often have zero where Tiberian has a vocalic shewa, e.g.
132Northeastern Ashkenazi
[krejˈvɔ] (Katz 1993, 74 |
‘close’)
[gvul] (Katz 1993, 74 |‘border’)
133In some traditions, it is often realized as the central vowel [ə], e.g.
134Mideastern Ashkenazi
[mədiːˈnu] (Glinert 2013, 194 |
‘country’)
135Central Ashkenazi
[mədiːˈnoː] (Glinert 2013, 196 |
‘country’)
I.2.5.1.2. Contextually-Conditioned Realization of Shewa
- 83 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.1, short version, editio (...)
In the Tiberian tradition, when vocalic shewa occurs before a guttural consonant or the letter yod, it was realized with a different quality through an assimilatory process. Before a guttural (i.e. ) it was realized as a short vowel with the quality of the vowel on the guttural,83 e.g.
ּ
[bƐʕƐR̟kʰaˈχɔː] ‘by your evaluation’ (Lev. 5.15)
[vɔhɔːˈjɔː] ‘and it became’ (Gen. 2.10)
[beˈʔeːeR̟] ‘well’
[moˈʔoːoð] ‘very’
[miˈħiːiR̟] ‘price’
[viħikˈkʰeːeχ] ‘and your palate’ (Cant. 7.10)
[muʕuːˈχɔː] ‘pressed’ (1 Sam. 26.7)
- 84 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.5.2. Saadya, Kutub al-Lugha(...)
136Before yod, it was realized as a short vowel with the quality of short ḥireq [i],84 e.g.
[biˈjoːom] ‘on the day’ (Gen. 2.17)
[lijisrˁɔːˈʔeːel] ‘to Israel (Gen. 46.2)
[hattʰijɔːˈ∫iːim] ‘the goats’ (Gen. 30.35)
[tʰaðammiˈjuːun] ‘you liken’ (Isa. 40.18)
According to the introduction to Kitāb al-Khilaf, where Ben Asher vocalized a preposition ל or ב followed by yod thus ‘to Israel’, Ben Naftali vocalized the first letter with ḥireq with no vowel on the yod, i.e.
(Lipschütz 1965, 18). The pronunciation of the reading of Ben Asher was [lijisrˁɔːˈʔeːel], the shewa being pronounced as [i] before the yod. In the reading of Ben Naftali, the sequence [iji] was contracted to a long vowel. As we shall see below, long vowels in syllables closed by a shewa must have had an epenthetic of the same quality, as was the case with long vowels in closed syllables in word-final position (§I.2.5.6.). Ben Naftali’s reading, therefore, can be represented [liːisrˁɔːˈʔeːel].
- 85 For this type of vocalization in Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts see Ginsburg (1897, 578), Kahle (...)
Among the early model manuscripts, C frequently exhibits the type of reading of shewa before yod attributed to Ben Naftali. Such vocalizations are common also in manuscripts with Non-Standard Tiberian vocalization after the prefixed particles ב , ל and ו , i.e. types of vocalization such as85
I.2.5.1.3. Ḥaṭef Signs
137The shewa sign is combined with some of the basic vowel signs to form the so-called ḥaṭef signs. In the standard Tiberian vocalization these compound signs include:
ḥaṭef pataḥ | (ֲַ א ) | [a] |
ḥaṭef segol | (ֱַ א ) | [Ɛ] |
ḥaṭef qameṣ | (ֳַ א ) | [ɔ] |
138In such signs the vocalic reading of the shewa is made explicit and also its quality.
- 86 There are five cases of this sign in A; cf. Yeivin (1968, 21). Ḥaṭef ḥireq is attested also in som (...)
139In the Aleppo Codex (A) there are sporadic examples of a ḥaṭef ḥireq sign,86 e.g.
A: (Psa. 14.1 ‘they have acted corruptly and have done abominable deeds’ | L [BHS]:
)
140In ḥaṭef signs the shewa sign is normally placed to the right of the vowel sign. There are, however, some isolated variant forms of ḥaṭef signs in the early manuscripts in which the shewa sign is placed under or above the vowel sign. When the component signs are stacked in this way, one of the components is sometimes placed inside the open space of the letter under which it is marked. Variants of this nature are attested, for example, in A (Yeivin 1968, 17). In L several of the ḥaṭef pataḥ signs are the result of later corrections of an original simple shewa sign by the scribe of L, Samuel ben Jacob, or a later hand. In many such cases, the ḥaṭef sign is misshapen with the vowel sign component often squeezed into the space above the shewa sign (Phillips 2020).
A: ‘it was rent asunder’ (Isa. 24.19)
L: ‘the curse of’ (Jud. 9.57)
- 87 Kahle (1930, 58*), Díez Macho (1963, 37) and Blapp (2017, 79).
141The stacking of shewa above the vowel sign and writing inside the letter, especially ḥet and he, is common in Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts.87
The default pronunciation of vocalic shewa with the quality of [a] was equivalent to that of the ḥaṭef pataḥ sign (ֲַ א ). Both the vocalic shewa and the vowels expressed by ḥaṭef signs were short vowels that, in principle, had the same quantity as short vowels in closed unstressed syllables, which were represented in standard Tiberian vocalization by a simple vowel sign. So, the vocalic shewa in a word such as ‘you cover’ (Job 21.26) would have been read with the same quality and quantity as the pataḥ in the closed syllable that follows it: [tʰaχasˈsƐː]. Likewise, the ḥaṭef pataḥ in
[haˈmƐːlƐχ] ‘interrogative + king’ would have been read with the same quality and quantity as the pataḥ in
[hamˈmƐːlƐχ] ‘the king’. Evidence for this is found in the Treatise on the Shewa published by K. Levy:
- 88 (...)
It is an established fact that every letter that has a ‘light’ (i.e. short) vowel requires a shewa unless this is precluded by a dagesh (in the following letter), as we exemplified at the beginning of our treatise,
or by a shewa that is adjacent to it, i.e. after it, as in
the ʾalef has a short vowel, and were it not for the shewa that comes after it, we would have given it a shewa.88
142The author of this treatise did not feel that there was a quantity difference between the vowel written with the ḥaṭef sign and the vowel represented by the full vowel sign. In his view, it was the syllable structure that necessitated the notational distinction and not the quantity of the vowel segment. The shortness of the vowel in a closed syllable was indicated by the dagesh or shewa on the subsequent consonant. For the sake of economy of notation, no additional sign was added to the vowel sign.
143Further evidence for the quantitative equivalence of shewa and ḥaṭef vowels, on the one hand, and short vowels represented by full vowel signs in closed unstressed syllables, on the other, can be found in the use of the ḥaṭef signs and shewa in a variety of Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah. These manuscripts sometimes represent short vowels in closed unstressed syllables with a ḥaṭef sign and represent short [a] in a closed unstressed syllable by a shewa sign, e.g.
(T-S A21.14, Khan 1991, 863 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 35.12 ‘to Abraham’)
- 89 The data for this and the following two examples were supplied by Estara Arrant.
(T-S A2.30 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 9.27 ‘this time’)89
(CUL Or 1080. A3.21 | L [BHS]:
Num. 6.2 ‘and you will say’)
(T-S AS 67.133 | L [BHS]:
Deut. 14.28 ‘in the year’)
144In manuscripts with vocalization, both those in the Genizah and those written in Europe, a ḥaṭef qameṣ sign is frequently marked on a closed syllable, e.g.
145Genizah manuscripts
(T-S A13.18, Blapp 2017, 125 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 90.12 ‘wisdom’)
(T-S A13.18, Blapp 2017, 125 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 90.10 ‘their strength’)
146European manuscripts
(Codex Reuchlinianus, Morag 1959, 230 | L [BHS]:
2 Sam. 15.19 ‘foreigner’)
(ASCNON B.I.1r, Pilocane 2004, 29 | L [BHS]:
Num. 27.1 ‘Hoglah’)
- 90 Yeivin (1968, 18), Dotan (1985).
147Even some of the Standard Tiberian Masoretic codices contain a few cases of ḥaṭef signs and shewa in closed unstressed syllables,90 e.g.
ּ
(L [BHS], Exod. 9.11 ‘on the magicians’)
(L [BHS], Exod. 30.8 ‘the evening’)
(L [BHS], 2 Sam. 10.11 ‘they are strong’)
(L [BHS], Josh. 7.25 ‘he brings trouble on you’)
(L [BHS], Jud. 16.2, ‘and we will kill him’)
(B | L [BHS]:
Lev. 20.3 ‘to Molech’)
148The ḥaṭef qameṣ representing a short qameṣ in a closed syllable occurs in a number of imperatives in the model manuscripts in forms that could be confused with suffix conjugation forms with a long qameṣ. In such cases, the use of the ḥaṭef in a closed syllable clearly has orthoepic motivations. Ḥaṭef qameṣ signs are marked frequently in this context in A (Yeivin 1968, 19), e.g.
(A | L [BHS]:
Jer. 49.28 ‘and destroy! ’)
(A | L [BHS]:
Ezek. 32.20 ‘drag away! ’)
(A | L [BHS]:
2 Chron. 6.42 ‘remember! ’)
149They are found occasionally in L, e.g.
(L | A:
1 Chron. 29.18 ‘keep! ’, Masora parva in L and A:
‘unique with short [qameṣ]’)
150According to a medieval source, the Rabbanite authority Hai Gaon (tenth–eleventh centuries) recommended the use of ḥaṭef qameṣ in such words to ensure that the vowel was read correctly with a short vowel (Harkavy 1970, 24).
151In the Masoretic literature, the root ḥ-ṭ-p is, in fact, is employed not only to describe short vowels in open syllables but also those in closed syllables, e.g.
- 91 Baer and Strack (1879, 31); cf. Ben-David (1957a, 14–15).
Whenever the verb is from the root ‘to fear’, (the prefix) has a long vowel (e.g.
[jiːR̟ˈʔuː] ‘they fear’), whenever it is from the root ‘to see’, (the prefix) has a short vowel (e.g.
[jiR̟ˈʔuː] ‘they see’).91
152Furthermore, in medieval Judaeo-Arabic texts with Tiberian vocalization, shewa and ḥaṭef pataḥ are used to represent Arabic short /a/ in both open and closed syllables, e.g.
[ʔalduːd] ‘the worm’ (T-S Ar. 8.3, fol. 16v, Khan 1992a, 107)
[χalaqtaniː] ‘you created me’ (T-S Ar. 8.3, fol. 16v, Khan 1992a, 107)
- 92 For further details see Yeivin (1985, 364–69) and the summaries in Khan (2013f) and Heijmans (2016 (...)
153The use of ḥaṭef signs to indicate short vowels in unstressed closed syllables was the regular practice in the so-called ‘compound system’ of Babylonian vocalization. In this variety of Babylonian vocalization, short vowels in both open and closed syllables were regularly represented by different signs from those used to indicate long vowels. Most of the signs marking short vowels were formed by combining a vowel sign with the Babylonian ḥiṭfa sign, equivalent to Tiberian shewa, and so were formally equivalent to the Tiberian ḥaṭef signs. The ḥiṭfa sign was placed over the vowel sign in unstressed syllables closed by dagesh in Tiberian or under the vowel sign in unstressed syllables closed by shewa in Tiberian or by a word-final consonant,92 e.g.
(Tiberian:
[hibˈbiːitˁ] ‘he watched’)
(Tiberian:
[ji∫ˈmoːoR̟] ‘he guards’)
154In such compound Babylonian vocalization, the consonant following the vowel is typically not marked by a dagesh sign or shewa sign (digsha and ḥiṭfa in Babylonian terminology). The compound Babylonian system, therefore, marked on the vowels what the Tiberian system marked on the following consonant, one of the purposes of both being to indicate the shortness of the vowel.
I.2.5.2. Syllabification and Metrical Structure
In the Tiberian Masoretic literature a consonant with a vocalic shewa or a ḥaṭef vowel sign was not considered to stand independently, but was said to be bound to the following consonant. Thus the word ‘you shall count’ (Lev. 23.16) was considered to have been composed of two prosodic units [tis–paR̟uː]. The sources refer to these prosodic units by the Arabic term maqṭaʿ (literally: ‘point of cutting off’), which is used in the Arabic grammatical literature to refer to a syllable. The treatise Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ notes that syllables thus formed have the status of words, i.e., they can stand independently:
- 93 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.10.3.
‘Another of its [i.e. the shewa’s] features is that it divides a word into (units) that have the status of words. This is because every letter at the end of a word is quiescent when it is deprived of an accompanying vowel and this letter that is deprived of a vowel is the stopping point (maḥaṭṭ) of the word and its place of division (maqṭaʿ), as in
in which the tav is the stopping point of the word, and
in which the resh is the stopping point of the word, and so forth. A quiescent shewa in the middle of a word has the same status, for it is in a sense a stopping point on account of its quiescence, for example
‘and the satraps’ (Esther 9.3),
‘those who chirp’ (Isa. 8.19). Each of these two expressions has the status of three words (kalim) on account of the quiescent shewa’.93
- 94 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.4.2.:
- 95 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.4.2.:
- 96 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.7.:
- 97 E.g. CUL T-S NS 301.84.
155In various passages in Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ there are references to the fact that a vocalic shewa or ḥaṭef vowel is read more quickly than a following full vowel sign, e.g. ‘The shewa makes a letter mobile and causes it to be uttered quickly, so that one cannot tarry on that letter’,94 ‘The shewa moves quickly forwards’.95 By contrast, a vowel is read more slowly, e.g. ‘A vowel has an indissoluble feature, namely slowness and steadiness’.96 A vocalic shewa was considered to be in a subordinate relationship to a following vowel. In some Masoretic treatises, the shewa is referred to as a khādim ‘servant’ and the vowels are mulūk ‘kings’.97 This would be analogous to the relationship of a conjunctive accent, also referred to in the treatises as a khādim, with a following disjunctive accent.
- 98 Even though he was unaware of the medieval sources described here, J. McCarthy (1979, 162) recogni (...)
These descriptions can be interpreted as referring to the rhythmic structure of the prosodic unit consisting of a vocalic shewa followed by a vowel whereby this unit is a prosodic foot consisting of an iambic metrical pattern with a weak syllable followed by a strong syllable. This can be represented thus: (. *), where the brackets enclose the syllables of the foot, the star * represents the strong prominent syllable and the dot the weak syllable. On a prosodic level, therefore, the phonetic realization of a word such as would consist of three syllables parsed into two feet:98
[(tʰis.) | (pʰa.ˈR̟uː)] |
(*) | (. *) |
156A number of features reflect the prosodic weakness of the syllable of a vocalic shewa. One feature is the neutralization of the original vowel quality (see below). Another feature is the occasional loss of gemination of a consonant with vocalic shewa. This applies in particular to sibilants, sonorants (yod, lamed, mem, nun) and qof, which constitute relative weak consonants. The omission of the dagesh in such forms varies across the medieval manuscripts, e.g. in L:
‘the frames’ (1 Kings 7.28, <
)
‘and he spoke (Gen. 8.15, etc. <
)
ַ
‘the one speaking’ (Gen. 45.12, etc.<
‘the one speaking’)
‘with bronze fetters’ (Jud. 16.21 <
)
‘sing praise’ (Jer. 31.7, <
)
‘let them seek’ (1 Sam. 16.16, <
)
157The Masoretic notion of maqṭaʿ, therefore, can be equated with the notion of foot in the prosodic hierarchy rather than syllable.
- 99 For the typology of feet in iambic metrical systems see Hayes (1985; 1995), Kager (1993, 383; 2007 (...)
In the representation above of the prosody of the it will be noticed that the first syllable by itself has the status of a foot, i.e. [(tʰis.) (pʰa.ˈR̟uː)], where feet are marked by rounded brackets. This is in conformity with the current state of research on the typology of the metrical phonology of the world’s languages. The foot (pʰa.ˈR̟uː), as remarked, is iambic, i.e. it consists of two syllables, of which the second is the stronger. It is a binary foot consisting of a light syllable with one mora, viz. CV, and a heavy syllable consisting of two morae, viz. CVV. In many languages with metrical phonology with binary feet, the feet may be binary either in the number of their syllables, as in the foot (CVCVV), which is known as a syllabic foot, or in the number of their morae, known as a moraic foot. This means that a heavy syllable with two morae, viz. CVV or CVC, normally represented in metrical phonology by (*), could function as a foot in the metrical scansion of a word alongside a syllabic foot.99 The metrical parsing of
[tʰis.pʰa.ˈR̟uː] would, therefore, be [(*), (. *)].
- 100 For hierarchical arrangement of linguistic rhythm on a grid see, for example, Liberman and Prince (...)
158The CVC syllable with a vowel [tʰis], which constitutes an independent foot, would be metrically stronger than the first syllable of the foot (. *), which is represented by a shewa sign. This would conform to the medieval descriptions cited above, which state that a vowel has the feature of ‘slowness and steadiness’ whereas a shewa ‘moves quickly forwards’. The CVC syllable [tʰis] would, however, be lesser in prominence than the final CVV syllable with the main stress [ˈR̟uː]. These differences in prominence can be represented by a metrical grid.100 In the grid the relative prominences are marked by differences in heights of columns of index marks:
Level 3 | x | ||
Level 2 | x | x | |
Level 1 | x | x | x |
(*) | (. | ˈ*) | |
(tʰis) | (pʰa. | ˈR̟uː) |
159As can be seen, the syllable with the main stress is the most prominent. This stress occurs on the strong syllable of the (. *) foot.
160The foot is of relevance for some phonological processes in the Tiberian pronunciation tradition, such as the conditioning of the allophones of resh (§I.1.20.) and the retraction of stress (§I.2.6.). This is a key justification for the reality of such metrical constituents (Nespor and Vogel 2012).
As remarked, the phonetic realization of a word such as [ˈ̟qoː.ol] should be parsed metrically as a single trochaic foot consisting of a strong syllable and a weak epenthetic syllable, which can be represented (* .). The weak syllable [ol] is bimoraic, so, in terms of its morae should be classified as heavy. It is somewhat unusual for a moraically heavy syllable to be the weak syllable of a binary foot (Kager 2007), but it is preferable to consider it as belonging together with the preceding syllable in the same foot constituent. The epenthetic syllable [VC] is weak and never stressed. Moreover, there is evidence from the distribution of the allophones of resh (§I.1.20.) and the pattern of the retraction of accents (§I.2.6.) for the parsing of two heavy syllables together as a single trochaic foot (* .). As for the occurrence of a trochaic foot in the foot inventory of Tiberian Hebrew together with the iambic foot (. *), it should be noted that the moraic foot consisting of CVV or CVC, which is a very frequent foot, is, in fact, best analysed as trochaic, although by convention it is normally represented (*). This is because the main prominence is on the first vowel mora, which is the most sonorous segment of the syllable, i.e. CV́V, CV́C (Kager 1993). A word-final syllabic sequence such as [ˈ̟qoːol] can be preceded by a vocalic shewa, e.g.
‘with a voice’, which should be analysed metrically as an amphibrach (. * .).
I.2.5.3. Phonological Principles
161In the vast majority of cases, vocalic shewa and ḥaṭef vowels can be regarded as having the synchronic status of epenthetic vowels. Very often, vocalic shewas in the Tiberian reading tradition occur where historically there were originally lexical vowels. These vowels were of different qualities, e.g.
[yiχtʰaˈvuː] ‘they (m) write’ (< *yaktubū)
[safɔːˈR̟iːim] ‘books’ (< *siparīm)
[davɔːˈR̟iːim] ‘words’ (< *dabarīm)
162The vocalic shewa, however, does not preserve the quality of the historical lexical vowel; rather, the shewa is a vowel with a neutralized quality, i.e., the maximally open vowel [a], in some circumstances modified by assimilation to its phonetic environment. As remarked, before a guttural, it was realized as a short vowel with the quality of the vowel on the guttural and before yod it was realized as a short vowel with the quality of short ḥireq [i]. Shortness and non-rounded vowel quality and also the copying of the quality of an adjacent vowel are characteristic features of epenthetic vowels (Hall 2011, 1581). In examples such as those cited for the reduction of lexical vowels to epenthetic vocalic shewa, the motivation for the vowel is no longer lexical but rather phonotactic, in that it breaks illicit clusters of consonants on the phonetic level. Lexical vowels can be reduced to zero in contexts where licit sequences of consonants are the result, e.g.
[malχeː] ‘kings of’ (< *malaḵē)
[li∫muːˈʔeːel] ‘to Samuel’ (< *la-Šamūʾēl)
- 101 Such underlying representations without the epenthetic vowel are adopted in analyses of Tiberian H (...)
163According to this analysis of vocalic shewa, it would have to be assumed that the original vowel is absent at some underlying level of the phonological derivation of words and an epenthetic vowel is introduced at the phonetic surface level. A /CC/ cluster at the onset of a syllable in word-initial position is broken by an epenthetic and this can be represented thus:101
The only exception was the shewa in forms of the feminine numeral ׁ ש ְ ת ֵ י / ׁ ש ְ ת ַ י ִ ם ‘two’ and the first component in ‘twelve’, which was silent [ˈ∫taːjim] / [∫teː] / [∫teːem]. It is for this reason that in many medieval manuscripts the accent yetiv is written on these words, e.g.
L: (Lev. 23.17)
L, A: (Ezek. 1.11, 41.24)
- 102 Cf. the Treatise on the Shewa and the other sources discussed by Levy (1936, 31–33), also Hidāyat (...)
- 103 Long version, MS II Firkovitch, Evr.-Arab II 418, fols. 21r–21v.
The rule of the accent yetiv is that it occurs on a vowel that is in the first syllable of a word. If the accent syllable is preceded by another vowel, including vocalic shewa, yetiv cannot occur but is replaced by pashṭa, e.g. ‘with this’ (Num. 16.28) (Yeivin 1980, 198–99). According to some sources, the word was pronounced by the Tiberian Masoretes with a prosthetic vowel: [ʔƐ∫ˈtʰaːjim],102 although this vowel is not written in the manuscripts. According to the author of Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ old and reliable codices (al-maṣāḥif al-ʿutuq al-jiyād) mark pashṭa
rather than yetiv
on this word,103 and this is occasionally found in the extant early codices, e.g.
C: (Ezek. 1.11)
164This can be interpreted as reflecting that the word was read with a prosthetic vowel, on account of which the accented vowel was not the first vowel of the word.
165An anonymous Masoretic treatise indicates that there was variation in the way the word was read:
- 104 II Firkovitch, Evr.-Arab II 365, fol. 6r: (...)
As for
some people read this word with a mobile shin (i.e. a mobile shewa on the shin) on account of the necessity (of doing so) due to the fact it occurs in initial position and with strengthening of tav (i.e. with dagesh). Some people do not permit the reading of the shin as mobile and add a hamza (i.e. glottal stop, ʾalef) before pronouncing it, although it is not written, in order to be able to pronounce the shin as quiescent (i.e. pronounce the shewa on the shin as quiescent). This (latter) is our reading.104
The silent shewa in / /
could be explained by the analysis of the shin as extrasyllabic and not part of the onset of the syllable. Moreover, if the cluster /∫tʰ/ were considered an onset, this would violate the normal principle of rising sonority of syllable onsets (Ewen and Hulst 2001, 136–41, 147–50; Hoberman 1989):
By contrast, in the imperative verbal form ‘drink (ms)! ’ (Gen. 24.14) the shin and the tav form the onset of a syllable and are split by an epenthetic: /∫θē/ [∫a.ˈθeː].
- 105 For this phenomenon after guttural consonants see §I.2.5.4. below.
The variant reading of / /
with a vocalic shewa reported in the aforementioned Masoretic treatise could be regarded as an epenthetic that was introduced late the transmission of the reading tradition after the rule of fricativization of post-vocalic
consonants had ceased to operate.105
When the preposition מ ִ ן ‘from’ is prefixed to the word /
/
and the nun is assimilated to the shin, two processes are attested. In Jud. 16.28. the shin is geminated and the shewa is read vocalic, resulting in the pronunciation of the tav as a fricative:
L, A: [mi∫∫aˈθeː] ‘avenge of one of my eyes’ (Jud. 16.28)
166In Jonah 4.11 the shin remains ungeminated and the ḥireq of the prefixed preposition is lengthened in compensation. The lengthening is indicated by a gaʿya:
L: ‘more than twelve myriads’ (Jonah 4.11)
- 106 II Firkovitch, Evr.-Arab. II 365, fol. 21r.
The author of the aforementioned anonymous Masoretic treatise states that in the tradition he is familiar with the shewa of the shin in is silent. He indicates, however, that some people read the shewa here vocalic and maintain the dagesh in the tav.106
167In word-internal position, the sequence /CCC/ is in principle syllabified /C.CC/, i.e. the second consonant is syllabified as an onset, and the cluster of the second and third consonants at the onset of the second syllable are split by a vocalic shewa, e.g.,
/yiχ.tʰvū/ [yiχ.tʰa.ˈvuː]
‘They write’
168A shewa under a geminated letter with dagesh within a word was likewise vocalic, e.g.
/ham.mlɔ̄.χī.m/ [ham.ma.lɔː.χiː.im]
‘The kings’ (Gen. 14.17)
I.2.5.4. Ḥaṭef Signs on Guttural Consonants
The discussion above concerning the epenthetic vocalic shewa has been concerned so far with cases in which it has developed from a historical lexical vowel. Another motivation for an epenthetic vowel was to introduce an ahistorical vowel between two consonants for orthoepic purposes. This applies in particular to the frequent insertion of an epenthetic after a guttural consonant where there was no historical lexical vowel in a sequence where the guttural originally closed a syllable in word-medial position and was in contact with a following consonant. These epenthetics are regularly written with ḥaṭef signs in the standard Tiberian tradition. The process can be analysed as involving the following stages.
169(i) The historical syllable structure reflects the morphological pattern of the grammatical form in question, e.g. the prefix conjugation verb יַעֲל֫ וּ ‘they go up’ would have the historical syllable structure *jaʕ.lū, in line with, for example, יִשְׁהּ֫ וּ ‘they drink’. This can be regarded also as the underlying phonological syllable structure /jaʕ.lū/.
170(ii) A short epenthetic is added after the guttural. This creates a short open phonetic syllable [CV], viz. [ja.ʕa.luː].
171(iii) The vowel in the syllable preceding the guttural is lengthened, viz. [jaː.ʕa.luː]. This is likely to have come about due to a metrical constraint on having a sequence of a light CV syllable and a following weak epenthetic syllable.
172In such syllabifications involving gutturals in word-medial position the epenthetic copies the quality of the preceding vowel:
173A similar process applies to sequences in which a monocon-sonantal preposition is attached to a word beginning with a guttural, e.g.
174‘in Edom’ (Gen. 36.32):
175The fact that an underlying short /e/ and short /o/ in forms such as /heʕ.lū/ and /tˁoh.rɔ̄/ surface in the phonetic form with a segol and qameṣ quality respectively, rather than as ṣere and ḥolem, suggests that the lengthening was a late rule, both diachronically and synchronically, in the derivation. The derivation can be posited to be as follows:
/heʕ.lū/ > | (i) [hƐ.ʕƐ.ˈluː] > | (ii) [hƐː.ʕƐ.ˈluː] |
/tˁoh.rɔ̄/ > | (i) [tˁɔ.hɔ.ˈR̟ɔː] > | (ii) [tˁɔː.hɔ.ˈR̟ɔː] |
The short vowel phonemes /e/ and /o/ are normally realized with the quality of [Ɛ] and [ɔ] respectively when they are short and [eː] and [oː] when they are lengthened in syllables with the main stress, e.g. /lev/ [ˈleː.ev] ‘heart’,
/ʕoz/ [ˈʕoː.oz] ‘strength’ (§I.2.3.2.). In a few sporadic cases the /e/ and /o/ vowels before gutturals are realized as [eː] and [oː], e.g.
(Hab. 1.15 ‘he has brought up’)
(Jud. 6.28 ‘it was offered up’)
176Here the epenthetic ḥaṭef on the guttural has its default quality of [a], since a ḥaṭef does not have the qualities of ḥolem or ṣere. These forms could be interpreted as reflecting a grammaticalization of the phonetic syllable structure in the environment of gutturals with a lengthened vowel before the guttural, whereby it is encoded in the underlying phonological form as a long vowel phoneme, viz.
/hē.ʕlū/ [heː.ʕa.ˈluː]
/hō.ʕlɔ̄/ [hoː.ʕa.ˈlɔː]
177Manuscripts with Babylonian vocalization exhibits many forms in which stage (ii) posited above for the development of most Tiberian forms (e.g. /heʕ.lū/ > (i) [hƐ.ʕƐ.ˈluː] > (ii) [hƐː.ʕƐ.ˈluː]) does not seem to have taken place, with the result that the vowel before the guttural remained short or was elided. This is reflected in the following pattern of vocalization of guttural consonants (Yeivin 1985, 313). Such a syllabification was allowed because in the Babylonian tradition there was no constraint on the sequence of two weak CV syllables or on clusters of consonants in syllable onsets (Khan 2019):
[nʕaˈrɔː] or [naʕaˈrɔː] ‘young woman’ (1 Kings 1.3 | L [BHS]:
)
[jʕaˈmiːð] or [jaʕaˈmiːð] ‘He will build up’ (Prov. 29.4 | L [BHS]:
)
In the metrical scansion of medieval Hebrew poetry in Spain, the vowel before a guttural with a ḥaṭef vowel is, likewise, treated as a short vowel, e.g. is scanned as CVCVCV̄ (Delgado 2020).
- 107 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
178The Greek transcriptions in Origen’s Hexapla also reflect a pronunciation in which the lengthening of the vowel before the guttural had not taken place. This is seen in the following examples, in which epsilon reflects a short vowel:107
εετηθ (Ambrosiana palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 89.46 ‘you wrapped’)
εελιθ (Ambrosiana palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 30.4 ‘you lifted up’)
εεμεδεθ (Ambrosiana palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 31.9 ‘you established’)
179This suggests that the late lengthening of the vowel before the guttural is a feature specific to the careful reading of the Tiberian tradition.
- 108 Cf. Hall (2011, 1577–78), who discusses this function of epenthesis in languages.
180The motivation for the introduction of the epenthetic between a guttural and a following consonant was orthoepic. Gutturals were weak consonants in the reading tradition and efforts were made to ensure that they were not slurred over. Acoustically the epenthesis made the gutturals more perceptible when separated from the following consonant108 and this facilitated their preservation in the reading.
181Although there is a tendency for gutturals to be followed by epenthetic vowels where parallel forms have silent shewa, this is not a universal rule. It is sometimes possible to identify additional phonotactic and metrical factors that appear to have conditioned the occurrence of the ḥaṭef vowels in certain forms with gutturals in contrast to other forms that have silent shewa.
As shown by DeCaen (2003) and Alvestad and Edzard (2009), one factor that conditions the occurrence of ḥaṭef vowels on gutturals, at least on ḥet, is sonority of the following consonant. They have shown that a ḥaṭef vowel tends to occur when the following consonant is high in sonority, e.g. in ‘he ploughs’ (Hos. 10.11), where the consonant is a sonorant rhotic, but exhibits a greater tendency to be omitted when the following consonant is lower in sonority, e.g.
‘he ceases’ (1 Sam. 9.5). This is motivated by the principle that the optimal contact between two adjacent syllables is where the onset of the second syllable is stronger than the offset (coda) of the preceding syllable (Vennemann 1988, 40), and so the contact with a following weak sonorous onset is eliminated by an intervening ḥaṭef vowel.
Variations, however, occur in inflections of the same verb, where the same consonants are involved, e.g. ‘they consider’ (Isa. 13.17) vs.
‘they consider’ (Psa. 35.20). In such cases the ḥaṭef appears to have been motivated by a metrical factor, namely the disfavouring of a rhythmic clash. This is seen in a metrical grid representation of the two forms. In these grids feet are marked in the first row. It will be assumed that feet after the main stress are extrametrical (marked with angular brackets < >). Evidence for this extrametricality is presented below.
Level 3 | x | ||
Level 2 | x | x | x |
Level 1 | x | x | x |
Feet: | (*) | (*) | <*> |
jaħ. | ˈ∫oː. | vuː |
- 109 A clash is the occurrence of two adjacent metrically strong elements with the same prominence. A l (...)
182The grid representation displays the varying degrees of the relative prominence of syllables. These include epenthetic syllables, syllables containing a vowel without the main accent, and syllables with the main accent (represented as levels 1, 2 and 3 respectively in the grids above). It is likely that the insertion of the syllable with the ḥaṭef vowel in the second form was favoured since it created grid euphony by repairing a potential rhythmic clash caused by two syllables of the same prominence before the stress,109 as shown in the following grid:
Level 3 | x | |||
Level 2 | x | x | x | |
Level 1 | x | x | x | x |
Feet | (*) | (*) | (* | .) |
*jaħ. | ∫oː. | ˈvuː | . un |
183In the standard Tiberian tradition a shewa is in principle silent on a guttural when the syllable of the guttural receives the main accent and it is followed by another syllable, e.g.
[∫ɔː.ˈmaː.aʕ.nuː] ‘we heard’ (Deut. 5.24)
[∫ɔː.ˈlaː.aħ.tʰiː] ‘I sent’ (Num. 22.37)
184If the accent moves forward after the attachment of a suffix in such forms, however, a ḥaṭef appears, e.g.
[∫a.maː.ʕa.ˈnuːhɔː] ‘we heard it’ (Psa. 123.6)
- 110 For extrametrical syllables at the right periphery of words see Kager (2007, 204).
185These phenomena can also be explained on metrical grounds if we posit, as remarked above, that syllables after the main accent are extrametrical and unfooted.110 The word ׁ ש ַָּ מ ִׂ֖ ע ְ נ ּ ו can be represented thus (extrametrical syllables in angular brackets):
∫ɔː. | ˈmaː. | aʕ. | nuː |
(*) | (* | .) | <*> |
186Here, since the syllable following the guttural is extrametrical and unfooted there is no rhythmic motivation for a ḥaṭef, which is a weak syllable that is obligatorily footed and metrically bound to a following strong syllable.
The metrical structure of is:
∫a. | maː. | ʕa. | ˈnuː. | hɔː |
(. | *) | (. | *) | <*> |
- 111 According to J. McCarthy (1979, 164) the ḥaṭef vowel on a guttural is bound prosodically with the (...)
187Here the accent on the syllable after the guttural licenses the ḥaṭef in that it can be footed and bound metrically to this strong footed syllable.111
188Apparent exceptions to this are cases where a conjunctive accent are retracted by nesiga onto a syllable before a ḥaṭef vowel, e.g.
(Jonah 1.11, ‘what shall we do to you?’)
(Job 21.16, ‘it is far from me’)
189This could be explained by a hypothesis of rule-ordering, whereby the syllabification and foot structure is fixed on the prosodic word level before the main stress retraction on the prosodic phrase level.
190In many cases where a guttural occurs after the main stress in forms with an unstressed suffixed directive he particle the guttural does not have a ḥaṭef, e.g.
191There are, however, two exceptions to this, in both cases the stressed vowel is ḥolem:
192There is general agreement across the model Standard Tiberian manuscripts regarding the marking of ḥaṭef signs on gutturals. The reason a composite ḥaṭef sign was written rather than a shewa is likely to have been that the Masoretes considered that readers would have had greater difficulty predicting the realization of shewa under gutturals than in other contexts. As we have seen, there were differences conditioned by variations in the sonority of the consonant following the guttural. There were also variations within forms of the same root, e.g. in different inflections of verbal forms such as
[ˌvaˑɟ.ɟaː.ḥa.ˈvoː.o∫] (Gen. 22.3 ‘and he saddled’) —
[vaɟ.ɟaḥ.ba.ˈ∫uː] (1 Kings 13.13 ‘and they saddled’)
[jaħ.ˈ∫oː.vuː] (Isa. 13.17 ‘they consider’) —
[jaː.ħa.∫oː.ˈvuː.un] (Psa. 35.20 ‘they consider’)
There were variations also across different grammatical categories, such as the distinction between the verb ‘he supplants’ (Jer. 9.3) and the proper name
The quality of the epenthetic vowel on gutturals deviates from the normal rules, which likewise motivated the addition of a vowel sign to the shewa. A shewa on a guttural, for example, retained the quality of [a] even if it preceded a guttural that was followed by a vowel of a different quality, e.g. [jim.ḥa.ʔuː] ‘they clap’ (Psa. 98.8). Moreover, as we have seen, an epenthetic vowel on a guttural became assimilated to the quality of a preceding segol or qameṣ, e.g.
[hƐː.ʕƐ.ˈmiː.ið] ‘he set up’,
[hɔː.ʕɔ.ˈma: .að] ‘it was set up’.
193In some extant manuscripts with Non-standard Tiberian vocalization, simple shewa is frequently marked on a guttural where standard Tiberian vocalization has a ḥaṭef sign, e.g.
(T-S A11.1, Blapp 2017, 44 | L [BHS]:
Job 39.23 ‘spear’)
(T-S A11.1, Blapp 2017, 44 | L [BHS]:
Job 40.23 ‘it will oppress’)
(T-S A11.1, Blapp 2017, 43 | L [BHS]:
Job 40.5 ‘I will answer’)
ֹ
(T-S A13.18, Blapp 2017, 124 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 90.5 ‘it passes away’)
- 112 Also in early manuscripts of Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible the Tetragrammaton is written (...)
This could be regarded as reflecting a more primitive stage of the development of the Tiberian vocalization system, in which the reading of a shewa on a guttural was not marked explicitly as vocalic by the addition of a vowel sign next to the shewa sign. In the standard Tiberian system a vestige of a more primitive stage of development can be identified in the vocalization of the qere of the Tetragrammaton with shewa corresponding to the ḥaṭef vowel on the ʾalef in the standard vocalization of the words representing the qere One can compare this to the continuing use of the early Hebrew script to write the Tetragrammaton in Qumran manuscripts that are otherwise written in square script (Tov 2012, 205).112
In L a ḥaṭef segol is sporadically written on the Tetragrammaton when the qere is This is marked on the first two cases where it has this reading (Gen. 15.2, 15.8) and thereafter is vocalized with shewa:
L: (Gen. 15.2)
L: (Gen. 15.8)
In some Standard Tiberian manuscripts the Tetragrammaton is vocalized with ḥaṭef segol when the qere is more regularly than in L, e.g. I Firkovitch Evr. I B 52.
- 113 Some manuscripts with Babylonian vocalization represent the initial vowel of the qere on the Tetra (...)
In some Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts the Tetragrammaton is vocalized with a ḥaṭef pataḥ when the qere is
e.g. II Firkovitch Evr. II B 3. Likewise, in Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts, ḥaṭef segol is written on the Tetragrammaton more frequently than in L when the qere is
(Blapp 2017, 151).113
194Conversely, in some Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts a ḥaṭef sign is marked on a guttural where the standard Tiberian tradition has a silent shewa, e.g.
195Genizah manuscripts
(T-S A12.1, Blapp 2017, 71 | L [BHS]:
Prov. 31.18 ‘her merchandise’)
(T-S A12.1, Blapp 2017, 71 | L [BHS]:
Prov. 31.23 ‘her husband’)
(T-S A12.1, Blapp 2017, 71 | L [BHS]:
Prov. 27.6 ‘and excessive’)
(T-S A12.1, Blapp 2017, 74 | L [BHS]:
Ruth 2.13 ‘I will be’)
(T-S A12.1, Blapp 2017, 71 | L [BHS]:
Prov. 27.20 ‘will [not] be satisfied’)
196European manuscripts
(Codex Reuchlinianus, Morag 1959, 224 | L [BHS]: ַ
Josh. 1.17 ‘we heard’)
(Codex Reuchlinianus, Morag 1959, 224 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 2.31 ‘darkness’)
(BL Add MS 21161, fol. 160v | L [BHS]:
Psa. 104.10 ‘springs’)
The occurrence of a dagesh in the letter after the ḥaṭef in forms such as
and
indicates that the guttural must originally have been vowelless and the epenthetic ḥatef vowel was inserted at a late period after the rule of fricativization of
consonants following vowels had ceased to operate. The same applies to the occurrence of the Non-Standard Tiberian dagesh in the nun of
which would normally occur only after a vowelless letter (§I.3.3.).
- 114 Data supplied by Shai Heijmans.
In manuscripts with Babylonian vocalization, there are several attested cases of the phenomenon of late insertion of an epenthetic and preservation of a plosive in word-internal position marked by dagesh (a miniature gimel over the letter) (Yeivin 1985, 342), e.g.114
[hiʕiˈtʰiːquː] ‘they moved away’ (L [BHS]:
Job 32.15)
[mʕagloːˈθɔːw] (L [BHS]:
Prov. 5.21 ‘his paths’)
[ʔarbaʕaˈtʰɔːm] (L [BHS]:
Dan 1.17 ‘the four of them’)
I.2.5.5. Ḥaṭef Signs on Non-Guttural Consonants
197Ḥaṭef signs are occasionally marked on non-guttural consonants in the Standard Tiberian vocalization. Many of these are epenthetic vowels, which had the purpose of disambiguating the reading of a shewa under a non-guttural consonant, i.e. to indicate explicitly that it was vocalic and to indicate its quality. This was an orthoepic measure to ensure correct reading. The model manuscripts differ as to the number and distribution of ḥaṭef signs on non-guttural consonants, and the Masoretic treatises refer to differences in this regard among the Tiberian Masoretes. The existence of these differences can be interpreted as indicating that ḥaṭef signs on non-guttural consonants emerged at a later stage in the development of the Tiberian vocalization system than ḥaṭef signs on guttural consonants.
198The main difference in the marking of ḥaṭef signs on non-guttural consonants is the extent to which the vocalic shewa with its default pronunciation of [a] was replaced by a ḥaṭef pataḥ sign. The Aleppo Codex (A) exhibits a particularly advanced tendency to mark ḥaṭef pataḥ in such contexts, and there are many examples where A has ḥatef pataḥ but L and other manuscripts have simple shewa, e.g.
A: (L [BHS]:
2 Kings 6.32 ‘the murderer’)
A: (L [BHS]:
Job 33.22 ‘to those who bring death’)
A: (L [BHS]:
1 Chron. 16.5 ‘with the cymbals’)
A: (L [BHS]:
1 Sam. 18.23 ‘does it seem to you a little thing?’)
A: (L [BHS]:
2 Kings 9.17 ‘and send’)
A: (L [BHS]:
Jer. 22.15 ‘are you a king?’)
A: (L [BHS]:
1 Kings 21.19 ‘they licked’)
199The manuscript L marks ḥaṭef pataḥ in place of vocalic shewa in a number of cases, e.g.
L: (Gen. 22.18 ‘they shall bless themselves’)
L, A: (Job 33.25 ‘his flesh became fresh’)
L, A: (Jud. 5.12 ‘and take captive!’)
200In some model manuscripts, however, ḥaṭef pataḥ never occurs on non-gutturals, e.g. MS Sassoon 507 (S) (Shashar 1983, 20).
201The Masorete Pinḥas Rosh ha-Yeshiva is reported in the Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim to have added a pataḥ sign to many instances of vocalic shewa under non-guttural consonants, some of which have simple shewa in L (ed. Dotan 1967, §20), e.g.
(Exod. 25.20 ‘covering’ | L [BHS]:
)
ִ(Isa. 24.19 ‘it has been rent asunder’ | L [BHS]:
)
(Deut. 9.27 ‘stubbornness’ | L [BHS]:
)
202There are also differences in the manuscripts and among the Masoretic authorities with regard to the replacement of a vocalic shewa by a ḥaṭef sign on a non-guttural consonant before a guttural consonant with the purpose of indicating the quality of the shewa. This is referred to in Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim, which states that there was no consistency among the Tiberian Masoretes in the marking of ḥaṭef qameṣ in words such as (ed. Dotan 1967, §19):
(L [BHS]:
Gen. 43.21 ‘and we opened’)
(L [BHS]:
Psa. 39.13 ‘hear’)
(L [BHS]:
Zech. 8.3 ‘and it will be called’)
- 115 Compare the remarks of David Qimḥi (Sefer Mikhlol, ed. Rittenberg, 1862, 138b): ‘Likewise with ḥ (...)
203This was a measure to ensure that the shewa was read with the quality of the qameṣ after the guttural rather than its default pronunciation with the quality of pataḥ.115 Here L generally exhibits the more conservative practice of leaving the words with simple shewa with the expectation that the reader would know the correct pronunciation. There are, however, some cases of ḥaṭef qameṣ in this context in L, e.g.
(Jer. 20.15 ‘he made him happy’)
204The Aleppo Codex exhibits a greater tendency to use a ḥaṭef sign in these circumstances (Yeivin, 1968, 35), e.g.
A: (L [BHS]:
Josh. 21.4 ‘the Kohathite’)
205As we have seen, A even uses an innovative ḥaṭef ḥireq. The purpose of this was to mark explicitly that a shewa was vocalic and that, since it was followed by a guttural with a ḥireq, the shewa was to be read with the quality of ḥireq (Yeivin 1968, 21), e.g.
[hiː.θi.ˈʕiː.vuː] (L [BHS]:
Psa. 14.1 ‘they have done abominable deeds’)
206Some Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts use the simple vowel sign ḥireq in place of the shewa sign where the shewa has the pronunciation of short [i] before a guttural with ḥireq, e.g.
(T-S A12.1, Blapp 2017, 75 | L [BHS]:
Prov. 29.13 ‘and a man’)
207In Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts shewa before yod, which is pronounced as [i], is frequently replaced by ḥireq, e.g. Genizah manuscripts
ַ
(T-S A12.1, Blapp 2017, 75 | L [BHS]:
Prov. 31.20 ‘and her hands’)
(T-S A13.20, Blapp 2017, 151 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 69.4 ‘waiting’)
208European manuscripts
(Codex Reuchlinianus, Morag 1959, 234 | L [BHS]:
Josh. 6.26 ‘he will found it’)
(Codex Reuchlinianus, Morag 1959, 234 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 15.2 ‘wails’)
I.2.5.6. Silent Shewa after a Long Vowel
- 116 The evidence for this in the various medieval sources is discussed in Khan (1987, 54–55).
209When shewa occurred within a word after a long vowel, it was as a general rule silent,116 e.g.
[jeːe∫ˈvuː] (Gen. 47.6 ‘let them dwell)
[jɔːɔðˈχɔː] (Gen. 49.8 ‘your hand’)
[∫ɔːɔmˈR̟uː] (Jud. 2.22 ‘they guarded’)
[∫oːomˈR̟eː] (2 Kings 25.18 ‘the guards of’)
210As can be seen in the transcriptions above, we should assume that an epenthetic vowel of the same quality of long vowel occurred before the consonant with the silent shewa after the long vowel. The presence of the epenthetic in such word-medial syllables is demonstrated by the fact that the first syllable can take a secondary stress in the form of a conjunctive accent, e.g.
[kʰoˌʕoːotˁˈjɔː] ‘like one wrapped’ (Cant. 1.7)
211A secondary stress cannot clash with the main stress but must, in principle, be separated from it by intervening syllable on the phonetic level.
This phenomenon may be compared to the insertion of an epenthetic after a long vowel in a closed syllable at the end of a word, e.g. [̟qoː.ol] ‘voice’ (§I.2.4.). The underlying syllable structure of words such as
[∫ɔː.ɔm.ˈR̟uː] could, therefore, be represented /∫ɔ̄.m.rū/, with a stray extrasyllabic consonant, just as it has been proposed to posit the existence of an extrasyllabic consonant in word-final position, viz. /̟qō.l/. Following the analysis by Kiparsky (2003) of Arabic syllable structure, we may say that such unsyllabified consonants, which he terms ‘semisyllables’, are licensed by moras adjoined to the higher node of the prosodic word rather than the syllable node:
On the phonetic level the extrasyllabic consonant was syllabified by means of an epenthetic. There was a constraint against word-final short epenthetic vowels in open syllables [CV], since such syllables had to be combined in an iambic foot with a following bimoraic syllable, i.e. a syllabification such as [̟qoː.la] or [R̟oː.ʕa] was not licit. So the epenthetic came before the consonant, forming a closed syllable [VC]: [ˈ̟qoː.ol], which constituted a trochaic foot (* .) metrically. In principle, the word-internal consonants in a sequence such /CV̄CCV̄/, as in could have been syllabified /CV̄. CCV̄/ with an epenthetic breaking the cluster in the onset of the second syllable /CCV̄/ on the phonetic level, thus [(CVː). (CV. CVː)], with the feet indicated by the round brackets. This is because a short open syllable [CV] is licit in this position. Such a syllabification, indeed, occurs in some words (see below). The normal syllabification of word-internal sequences such as /CV̄CCV̄/ and /CV̄CCVC/ as /CV̄.C.CV̄/ and /CV̄.C.CVC/ rather than /CV̄. CCV̄/ and /CV̄. CCVC/ is likely to have developed by analogy with the obligatory syllabification /CV̄. C/ in word-final position.
- 117 J. McCarthy (1979, 157) also proposed that such word-internal syllables were feet containing ‘two (...)
212The metrical parsing of a form such as [∫ɔː.ɔm.ˈR̟uː] would be [(* .) ˈ (*)], i.e. [(∫ɔː.ɔm). (ˈR̟uː)]. As remarked already, the second syllable in the trochaic foot (* .) is heavy since it is bimoraic, but it would have been of relatively low prominence. The relative differences in prominence can be reconstructed on a metrical grid as follows:117
Level 3 | x | ||
Level 2 | x | x | |
Level 1 | x | x | x |
Feet | (* | .) | (*) |
∫ɔː. | ɔm. | ˈR̟uː |
I.2.5.7. Vocalic Shewa after a Long Vowel
I.2.5.7.1. On Guttural Consonants
213In certain cases, a shewa after a long vowel in word-internal position was pronounced vocalic. This applies to all cases where the consonant after the long vowel is a guttural. In such cases, as is the rule with gutturals, the vocalic reading is explicitly indicated by ḥaṭef signs, e.g.
[kʰoːhaˈniːim] ‘priests’
[sˁoːʕaˈ̟qiːim] (Gen. 4.10 ‘crying out’)
[loːħaˈsˁiːim] (Exod. 3.9 ‘pressing’)
[kʰoːʔaˈviːim] (Gen. 34.25 ‘being in pain’)
- 118 Data supplied by Shai Heijmans.
Hypothetically it could have been possible for a type of furtive pataḥ vowel to have been inserted before the guttural, i.e. [loːwaħˈsˁiːim], by analogy with gutturals in word-final position, as in, for example, [moːwaħ] ‘marrow’. The insertion of the epenthetic after the guttural had an orthoepic motivation. It was a more optimal position to make the guttural maximally perceptible before the following consonant. This also put the guttural in the onset of a syllable, which is a stronger position than the syllable coda and thus more optimal from an orthoepic point of view. The placement of the epenthetic before the guttural in word-final position, i.e. furtive pataḥ, is due to the fact that the constraint on word-final, unfooted CV syllables outranked the orthoepic principle of putting the guttural in onset position. The Babylonian reading tradition did not have such a constraint on word-final CV syllables and placed furtive pataḥ after a guttural in word-final position. This is attested where the final consonant is ʿayin (Yeivin 1985, 327–28), e.g.118
[jagˈgiːʕa] (L [BHS]:
Isa. 8.8 ‘it will reach’)
[madˈduːʕa] (L [BHS]:
Jer. 2.14 ‘why?’)
I.2.5.7.2. On Non-Guttural Consonants
214The Masoretic sources list a number of cases where the shewa on non-guttural consonants after a long vowel is vocalic rather than silent according to the general rule. The early Tiberian Masoretic manuscripts vocalize many of these cases with ḥaṭef pataḥ to indicate that the shewa should be read as vocalic (§I.2.5.1.). As remarked above, some manuscripts vocalize in this way more frequently than others and it is particularly common in A.
I.2.5.7.3. Long Vowel before Two Identical Consonants
215One notable case is a shewa under the first of a pair of identical consonants, which was vocalic if the preceding vowel was long, e.g.
L: [lɔː̟qaˈ̟quː] ‘they licked’ (A:
1 Kings 21.19)
L: [sɔːvaˈvuː] ‘they surrounded’ (A:
Josh. 6.15)
L: [ʃoːtˁɑˈtˁuː] ‘run to and fro!’ (A:
Jer. 5.1)
L: [ʕoːlaˈloːoθ] ‘gleanings’ (A:
Jud. 8.2)
L: [ħoːq̟aˈq̟iː] ‘one who carves’ (A:
Isa. 22.16)
L: [baθoːχaˈχɛːɛm] ‘in your presence’ (Gen. 23.9)
L: [hoːliːχaˈχɔː] ‘he caused you to go’ (Deut. 8.2)
216The insertion of the epenthetic between the consonants was most likely favoured since it made the two identical consonants more perceptible and so ensured that they were not slurred together and contracted in the reading. The vocalic shewa, therefore, here has an orthoepic motivation. In a CV̄CC sequence one repair strategy of the overlong syllable CV̄C would have been to elide the consonant in the coda. This would have been easier where there was a sequence of two identical lexical consonants.
- 119 Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan, 1967, §5), Saadya, Kutub al-Lugha (ed. Dotan 1997, 466–67). Treatis (...)
217If the preceding vowel was short, the shewa was silent.119 This was due to the fact that the syllable CVC with a short vowel was bimoraic and not subject to any change to optimalize its weight, e.g.
L: [hinˈniː] ‘behold me’ (Gen. 6.17)
L, A: [haR̟R̟eː] ‘the mountains of old’ (Deut. 33.15)
L, A: [R̟ivˈvoːoθ] ‘the ten thousands of Efraim’ (Deut. 33.17)
L, A: [ħiqqeː] ‘decrees of iniquity’ (Isa. 10.1)
L, A: [jillɔːˈθɔːɔh] ‘its wailing’ (Isa. 15.8)
L: [va∫ɔðˈðuː] ‘and devastate!’ (A:
Jer. 49.28)
218Note that in the last example, A indicates the shortness of the vowel in the closed syllable by ḥaṭef qameṣ sign.
- 120 Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan, 1967, §5), the Treatise on the Shewa (ed. Levy, 1936, טז).
219In six words, however, shewa on the second of two identical letters after a long vowel is silent, in all of which the long vowel has the main stress. These are the following:120
L, A: [jimsˁɔːˈʔuːunniː] ‘they (m) will find me’ (Prov. 8.17)
L, A: [ja∫aːħaˈrˁuːunniː] ‘they seek me’ (Hos. 5.15)
L, A: [ˌjaˑχabbaˈðɔːɔnniː] ‘he honours me’ (Psa. 50.23)
L, A: [ji̟qR̟ɔːˈʔuːunniː… ja∫aːħaˈrˁuːunniː vaˈloː jimsˁɔːˈʔuːunniː] ‘they call me… they seek me but do not find me’ (Prov. 1.28).
This can be explained on metrical grounds in the same way as the difference between and
(§I.2.5.4.) The occurrence of vocalic shewa after the main accent in
is not optimal since the final syllable after the accent is extrametrical and unfooted and a vocalic shewa is a weak syllable that is obligatorily footed and metrically bound to a following strong syllable.
220When the accent on a word is retracted by nesiga onto a long vowel before two identical consonants, A marks the shewa on the first consonant as vocalic by ḥaṭef pataḥ in virtually all cases, e.g.
L: [ˈbɔːzazuː ˈbaːaz] ‘they took plunder’ (A: ּּ
Isa. 33.23)
L: [ˈnoːsasɔː ˈvoː] ‘it drove it on’ (A:
Isa. 59.19)
L: [viːˈsoːvavuː ˈʕiːiR̟] ‘and they go around the city’ (A:
Psa. 59.7)
L: [joˈħoː̟qa̟quː ˈsˁƐːðƐ̟q] ‘they decree what is just’ (A:
Prov. 8.15)
221In one case that is extant in A, however, a shewa is written rather than a ḥaṭef pataḥ. The consonant following the retracted accent here is the sonorant nun:
L: ‘you will understand it’ (A:
Jer. 23.20)
- 121 This is contrary to the claim of Dotan in his notes to his edition of Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (1967, vo (...)
It is clear from the vocalization in A of the majority of examples that the retraction of the accent did not cause the shewa to become silent.121 As noted above (§I.2.5.4.), in the sequence of rules of derivation, the retraction of an accent appears to have taken place after the syllable structure had been established. With regard to (Jer. 23.20), in which A has a simple shewa sign, it is likely that here too the shewa was read as vocalic, since the Treatise on the Shewa states that the shewa on the first of two identical letters after the vowel ḥolem was read in all cases without exception as vocalic (ed. Levy 1936,
).
I.2.5.7.4. Long Vowel in a Prefixed Particle before Resh
222According to the Treatise on the Shewa published by Levy (1936), if resh with shewa is the first letter of a noun and is preceded by a prefixed grammatical particle that is vocalized with qameṣ or ṣere, the shewa was pronounced vocalic. The relevant passage is as follows (Levy 1936, זי - חי ):
- 122
Rule concerning the resh that causes shewa to be vocalic: Whenever resh has shewa under it and is the second letter of the word, the shewa is always pronounced like pataḥ, as in
(Job 26.5 ‘the shades tremble’), and as in
(Psa. 1.4, etc. ‘the wicked’), ( 2 Chron. 35.7 ‘from the possession of’), ּ
(Ezra 1.6 ‘with goods’),
(Gen. 19.2, etc. ‘in the street’), ּ
(Prov. 7.12, etc. ‘in the streets’),
(Neh. 4.15 ‘ [held] onto the spears’),
(Neh. 4.10 ‘and the spears’), and other cases. Know that this rule applies only when it [i.e. resh] is preceded by qameṣ or ṣere [lit. two dots]. If it occurs without these two signs (preceding it), it is never pronounced like pataḥ, as in
(Jud. 9.37 ‘coming down’),
(Neh. 2.19 ‘rebelling’), ּ
(Ezra 10.9, etc. ‘in the open square of’),
(Esther 1.8 ‘according to the will of’),
‘for the will of’ (cf.
Lev. 1.3),
( 1 Sam. 23.28, etc. ‘from pursuing’),
(Deut. 16.20, etc. ‘you shall pursue’). The whole of Scripture follows this rule. The words that I have just shown you, under which the shewa is vocalic, are only nouns. Do not mix these with verbs and fall into error.122
The intention of the statement that the shewa is pronounced as pataḥ (yuftaḥ) is that the shewa was pronounced vocalic. This was the default pronunciation of vocalic shewa and was the pronunciation of most of the cases cited, e.g. [hɔːR̟ɑ∫ɔːˈʕiːim],
[meːR̟ɑˈχuːu∫]. In some of the cases cited in the Treatise on the Shewa, however, the vocalic shewa occurs before a guttural and so one would expect that it would have had the quality of the vowel after the guttural, e.g.
[vɔːR̟oˈħoːov]. In some cases in the early manuscripts, the quality of the vocalic shewa before the guttural is made explicitly by a ḥaṭef sign, e.g. ּ
[bɔːR̟ɔhɔːˈtˁiːim] (L [BHS] Gen. 30.38 ‘in the troughs’).
223The reading of the shewa as vocalic in these forms appears to have had a morphological motivation. It was a strategy to keep the morpheme boundary perceptually distinct, aligning the prosody with the morphology by creating a foot boundary between the grammatical affix and the stem of the word:
hɔː. | R̟ɑ. | ∫ɔː. | ˈʕiː. | im |
(*) | (. | *) | (* | .) |
224In the same phonological conditions, i.e. resh preceded by long qameṣ or ṣere, in other contexts the shewa was generally silent and the resh footed with the preceding syllable, e.g. in the following verbal forms (feet indicated by round brackets):
[(jɔː.ɔR̟). (ˈðuː)] ‘they went down’ (Exod. 15.5)
[(jeː.eR̟). (ˈðuː)] ‘they (m) will come down’ (1 Sam. 13.12)
[(joː.oR̟).ˈ (ðiː.im)] ‘coming down (mpl)’ (Jud. 9.37)
The statement at the end of the passage from the Treatise on the Shewa implies that the reading of the shewa as vocalic after a prefixed grammatical particle only applied to nouns, suggesting that in forms such as (Isa. 21.3 ‘from seeing’),
(Ezek. 34.10 ‘from feeding’),
(Gen. 46.3 ‘from going down’) the shewa would be silent, viz. [meːeR̟ˈʔoːoθ], [meːeR̟ˈʕoːoθ], [meːeR̟ˈðɔː]. In the Hebrew Masoretic treatise §11 in Baer and Strack’s (1879) corpus, however, it is stated that the shewa in
(Isa. 21.3) and
(Ezek. 34.10) is read vocalic.
The strategy of reading the shewa as vocalic to mark the morpheme boundary only applied to cases where the particle had a vowel phoneme with inherent length, i.e. long qameṣ /ɔ̄/ or long ṣere /ē/. In such cases, the reading of an epenthetic after the resh would be achieved by syllabifying the resh in the onset of the initial syllable of the noun, e.g. /mē.rχū.∫/ [meː.- R̟ɑ.ˈχuː.u∫]. When the particle had a short vowel phoneme, e.g. ּ
the syllabification of the resh in the onset would require compensatory lengthening by the replication of the short phoneme to fill the slot of the resh, i.e. /bir.ħō.v/ > /bii.rħō.v/. Evidently, there was a constraint against this additional adjustment of the syllable structure.
225The Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, §20) includes some cases of constructions consisting of a prefixed particle with qameṣ or ṣere before resh as examples of the practice of the Masorete Pinḥas Rosh ha-Yeshiva to use ḥatef pataḥ to indicate that a shewa on a non-guttural consonant was vocalic, viz.
‘from Rephidim’ (L [BHS]:
Exod. 19.2)
‘the respite’ (L [BHS]: ּ
Exod. 8.11)
‘the fourth’ (L [BHS]:
Gen. 2.14, etc.)
‘the property’ (L [BHS]:
Num. 16.32,
1
Chron. 27.31,
2 Chron. 21.17)
‘the bad ones’ (L [BHS]:
Exod. 9.27, etc.)
With the exception of (Num. 16.32), L vocalizes all cases of resh in these constructions with a simple shewa. Even in Num. 16.32 the ḥaṭef pataḥ is misshapen and the pataḥ appears to have been added during a later revision. As one would expect, A marks a ḥaṭef pataḥ in many cases to indicate explicitly that the shewa was vocalic. The extant examples include:
‘the fourth’ (L [BHS]:
1 Kings 6.37)
‘and the rough places’ (L [BHS]:
Isa. 40.4)
‘and the wicked’ (L [BHS]:
Isa. 57.20)
‘(do not envy) the wicked’ (L [BHS]:
Prov. 24.19)
‘the evil (way)’ (L [BHS]:
Ezek. 3.18)
‘to relief’ (L [BHS]:
Psa. 66.12)
‘the property’ (L [BHS]:
,1 Chron. 27.31)
‘the property’ (L [BHS]:
2 Chron. 21.17)
‘from the property of’ (L [BHS]:
2 Chron. 35.7)
226It is significant to note, however, that a proportionally larger number of cases of these constructions are vocalized in A with simple shewa. Some selected examples include:
‘the fourth’ (Josh. 19.17 + 20 other cases)
‘on the fourth’ (Ezek. 1.1)
‘the fourth’ (1 Kings 6.1, + 8 other cases)
‘the evil ones’ (Zeph. 1.3 + 3 other cases)
(Isa. 48.22 + 1 other case)
‘from wicked ones’ (1 Sam. 24.14 +5)
227These include cases in which a preposition is attached to a verbal infinitive and so, judging by the statement in the Treatise on the Shewa, one would expect the shewa to be read as silent:
(Isa. 21.3 + five other cases)
(Ezek. 34.10)
228It is possible that the use of simple shewa in A before many nominal forms is due to inconsistency of the marking of ḥaṭef pataḥ on non-guttural consonants. There are also a number of cases in A in which a vocalic shewa would have had the quality of [o] before guttural with ḥolem. In such cases, there was no available ḥaṭef sign to represent this quality, e.g.
‘the distant ones’ (Isa. 46.12, 66.19)
‘and in the squares’ (Cant. 3.2)
‘from the square of’ (2 Sam. 21.12)
229Some of the Karaite transcriptions use the Arabic sukūn symbol to mark explicitly that a shewa is silent. It is significant that examples can be found in the manuscripts of the sukūn marked on the transcription of resh where, according to the rule in the Treatise on the Shewa just described, one would expect the shewa to be vocalic, e.g.
[wuvɔːɔR̟ħoːˈvoːoθ] (BL Or 2554 fol. 56v, 9 | L [BHS]:
Cant. 3.2 ‘and in the squares’)
230This indicates that in some streams of the Tiberian tradition the shewa was not consistently pronounced vocalic after a long vowel of a prefixed particle.
I.2.5.7.5. Shewa in Inflections of Specific Verbal Roots
A shewa on the medial radical of the verbal roots ‘to drive out’,
‘to eat’,
‘to bless’,
‘to go down’, and
‘to go’ is vocalic after a long vowel in certain circumstances, according to Ben Asher. In some of the cases where Ben Asher read the shewa as vocalic, Ben Naftali read it as silent.
- 123 For this rule see Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, §21), Treatise on the Shewa (ed. Levy, 1936, (...)
231In forms with shewa on the resh following a long vowel from the root רב " ך ‘to bless’,123 if the accent is on the bet, the shewa is silent. This applies to cases where the accent has been retracted by nesiga, e.g.
L: [vihiθˈbɔːɔR̟χuː ˈvoː] ‘they will bless themselves in him’ (A:
Jer. 4.2)
L: [vijiθˈbɔːɔR̟χuː ˈvoː] ‘and may they bless themselves in him’ (A:
Psa. 72.17)
L: [ˈbɔːɔR̟χuː ˈnɔː] ‘bless!’ (A: Chron. 29.20)
- 124 According to Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan, 1967, §21) the only exception in the Bible is the Aram (...)
232If, however, the accent is on the kaf, the shewa after a long vowel is vocalic.124 The manuscript A regularly indicates the vocalic realization by a ḥaṭef pataḥ sign and this is frequently the case also in L, e.g.
L: [bɔːR̟aˈχeːniː] ‘bless (ms) me!’ (Gen. 27.34)
L: [bɔːR̟aˈχuː] ‘bless the Lord’ (A:
Psa. 103.20)
L: [tavɔːR̟aˈχaːanniː] ‘in order that your soul blesses me’ (Gen. 27.19)
L: [bɔːR̟aˈχuː] ‘bless the Lord’ (Jud. 5.2)
- 125 The manuscript in the I Firkovitch collection labelled L17 by Yeivin (1968) has recently been iden (...)
233The marking of ḥaṭef pataḥ is not completely regular in L and, moreover, many cases seem to be corrected from an original simple shewa sign. Other manuscripts written by the scribe of L, Samuel ben Jacob, mark the ḥaṭef pataḥ more regularly, such as the manuscript known as L17:125
L: [wuvɔːR̟aˈχuː] ‘and bless’ (L17, A
2 Sam. 21.3)
L: [θavɔːR̟aˈχƐːƐnnuː] ‘do not bless him’ (L17, A
2 Kings 4.29)
- 126 This is confirmed by Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, which states that (...)
234The shewa was vocalic also when a secondary accent occurred on the syllable beginning with the bet. This is the case, for example, in the following form, although it is written with a simple shewa in L:126
L: [maˌvɔːR̟aˈχƐːχɔː] ‘and I will bless those that bless you’ (Gen. 12.3)
- 127 Baer and Strack (ed. 1879, §52), Kitāb al-Khilaf (ed. Lipschütz 1965, 17).
According to Masoretic sources,127 Ben Asher read a shewa on the resh in forms from the root ‘to drive out’ as vocalic when the third radical has segol before a suffix with a geminate nun, i.e. in the following three forms:
L: [ʔaʁɔːR̟aˈ∫ƐːƐnnuː] ‘I will not drive them out’ (Exod. 23.29)
L: [ʔaʁɔːR̟aˈ∫ƐːƐn.nuː] ‘I will drive them out’ (Exod. 23.30)
L: [ʔaʁɔːR̟aˈ∫ƐːƐn.nuː] ‘and I will drive them out’ (Num. 22.6)
235Elsewhere Ben Asher read a shewa on the resh of forms from this root as silent, e.g.
L: [vajʁɔːɔR̟ˈ∫uː] ‘and they drove out’ (Jud. 11.2)
L: [ʁeːeR̟ˈ∫uːniː] ‘they have driven me out’ (1 Sam. 26.19)
236There was one exception, in which Ben Asher read the shewa as vocalic (indicated by ḥaṭef pataḥ in L and A):
L, A: [ˌvaːjʁɔːR̟aˈ∫eːhuː] ‘and he drove him out’ (Psa. 34.1)
- 128 Kitāb al-Khilaf (ed. Lipschütz 1965, 17, מה ,ַג).
237By contrast, Ben Naftali read the shewa in all forms of the root ש׳׳רג as silent.128
- 129 Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, §22), Treatise on the Shewa (ed. Levy, 1936, ל).
- 130 Cf. Phillips (2020), who notes that simple shewa is marked in these forms in the extant portions o (...)
The same applies to the root129 Ben Asher read the shewa as vocalic in forms in which the third radical has segol before a suffix with geminate nun. These amount to 24 cases in total in the Hebrew Bible. All cases that are extant in A are vocalized with a ḥaṭef pataḥ. In L the marking of ḥaṭef pataḥ is not systematic. The ḥaṭef sign is found in only 14 cases out of 24, and in some of these the ḥaṭef appears to be a later modification of an original simple shewa sign:130
L: [tʰoːχaːˈlƐːƐnnɔː] ‘you shall eat it’ (Gen. 3.17)
L: [joːχaːˈlƐːƐnnɔː] ‘he may eat it’ (Lev. 6.11)
L: [tʰoːχaːˈlƐːƐnnuː] ‘you may eat it’ (Num. 18.10)
L, A: [tʰoːχaˈlƐːƐnnɔː] ‘you (ms) shall eat it’ (Ezek. 4.12) Examples from L with simple shewa:
L: [joːχaːˈlƐːƐnnuː] ‘he may eat it’ (Lev. 7.6)
L: [vanoːχaːˈlƐːƐnnuː] ‘that we may eat him’ (A:
2 Kings 6.28)
L: [vanoːχaːˈlƐːƐnnuː] ‘that we may eat him’ (A:
2 Kings 6.29)
238In other contexts, Ben Asher read the shewa as silent. In L and the extant portions of A a simple shewa sign is regularly marked in such cases:
L: [θoːoχˈluː] ‘you shall [not] eat’ (Deut. 14.21)
L: [tʰoːoχˈluː.un] ‘you shall [not] eat’ (Num. 11.19)
L, A: [vaɟɟoːoχˈluː] ‘and they ate’ (Jos. 5.11)
L, A: [joːoχˈluː] ‘they will eat’ (1 Kings 21.23)
239The sources indicate that also in the following form, where the lamed has segol but is not followed by a geminated nun, Ben Asher read the shewa as silent:
L: [ʔoːoχˈlƐːhɔː] ‘those (m) who eat it’ (Ecc. 5.10)
- 131 Kitāb al-Khilaf (ed. Lipschütz 1965, 17, ג). Phillips (2020) suggests that the frequent lack of ḥa (...)
240By contrast, Ben Naftali read the shewa as silent in all forms of the root ל׳׳כא , including those that are followed by a suffix with segol and geminated nun.131
- 132 Dotan (1967, 276), Phillips (2020).
241According to Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, §25), when forms from the roots רי " ד ‘to come down’ and לה " ך ‘to go’ are in deḥiq constructions (§I.2.8.1.2.) and are followed by a word beginning with a consonant with dagesh, then a shewa on the medial radical is vocalic. In L all of the cases are vocalized with ḥaṭef pataḥ, but most of these are the result of later corrections from an original simple shewa sign,132 e.g.
L: [ʔeːR̟aðɔˑ-ˈnnɔː] ‘I will go down’ (Gen. 18.21)
L: [ˌneːlaχɔˑ-ˈnnɔː] ‘let us go’ (Exod. 3.18)
242In the extant portions of A and in L17 (written by the scribe of L) they are regularly vocalized with ḥaṭef pataḥ, e.g.
243L, A: ( 1 Sam. 26.11)
244L, A: ( 2 Kings 6.2)
L, A, L17: ‘let us go there’ (1 Sam. 9.6)
L, A, L17: ‘I shall go’ (
2 Sam. 15.7)
245Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim only mentions these two verbs in this rule. Saadya, however, in his Kutub al-Lugha gives the general rule that shewa after a long vowel is always vocalic when the vowel two syllables after it is stressed and is preceded by dagesh (ed. Dotan 1997, 464–69). In addition to forms of the verb ך׳׳לה , he cites the following examples:
L: [ˈniːR̟a∫ɔˑ ˈllɔːnuː] ‘let us take possessions for ourselves’ (A:
Psa. 83.13)
L: [ˌnoːθɑrˁɔˑ-ˈbbɔːɔh] ‘there is left in it’ (A:
Ezek. 14.22)
L: [ˈjɔːR̟ɔʕɔˑ ˈlloː] ‘ [his soul] trembled’ (A:
Isa. 15.4)
246Only the first of these examples is vocalized with ḥaṭef pataḥ in A. Saadya also cites the following Biblical Aramaic form as a case that follows the rule and so has vocalic shewa after the long vowel. This form is not a deḥiq construction, but has a dagesh in a suffix:
L: [ja∫eːzavinˈnɔːɔχ] ‘he will deliver you’ (Dan. 6.17)
247There are numerous other cases attested in the Hebrew Bible with the structure that according to Saadya’s formulation of the rule would be expected to have a vocalic shewa, although he does not refer to them explicitly. In all such cases, both L and A have a simple shewa sign, suggesting that these manuscripts reflect a reading with silent shewa, e.g.
L, A: ‘it has oppressed me’ (Isa. 38.14)
L, A: ‘it did that’ (Isa. 41.20)
L, A: ‘it breathed upon it’ (Isa. 40.7)
L, A: ‘it was pleasant to me’ (Jer. 31.26)
248Some Karaite transcriptions explicitly mark the shewa as silent in such forms by an Arabic sukūn sign, e.g.
(BL Or 2548 fol. 50v, 7 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 41.20 ‘it did’)
249The manuscripts L and A sporadically mark a ḥaṭef pataḥ in place of shewa after a long vowel in forms that are not mentioned in the Masoretic sources, e.g.
L, A: ‘I would approach him’ (Job 31.37)
L, A: ‘columns’ (Joel 3.3)
A: ‘the power has gone’ (L [BHS]:
Deut. 32.36)
In most cases where the shewa is vocalic in the forms cited in this section, one of the consonants involved is a sonorant ר /r/ or ל /l/. The general rule given by Saadya, however, would potentially include cases where the sequence of consonants does not include a sonorant, and he indeed cites one such example from Biblical Aramaic ( Dan. 6.17). The consonants in potential contact here, nevertheless, are still relatively weak (fricatives). The distribution of ḥaṭef pataḥ in A, on the other hand, appears to indicate that shewa was frequently read as silent in the context that Saadya claims would have a vocalic shewa, including several cases where one of the consonants is a sonorant.
250There was variation with regard to the reading of the shewa in these contexts in various streams of the Tiberian tradition, as shown, for example, by the differences between Ben Asher and Ben Naftali in this regard that are referred to in Kitāb al-Khilaf. Saadya presents a type of reading in which the shewa was more regularly read as vocalic than in the traditions of Ben Asher and Ben Naftali and the evidence reflected by the early Bible codices.
251The result of the reading of the shewa as vocalic was to break the contact between two consonants. This would have ensured that each consonant was flanked by vowels. The motivation for this may have been to increase the salience of the sonorants, which were weak consonants and vulnerable to loss or inadequate realization in certain circumstances.
In many of the forms discussed above, the shewa is read as vocalic where the form in question contains a geminated consonant in a suffix (e.g. Gen. 3.17) or a following word to which the first word is bound prosodically by maqqef or deḥiq (
2 Kings 6.2,
Exod. 4.18). This may have induced a quicker reading of the syllables and so increased the potential weakness of the sonorants. The Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ refers to the quick reading and compression of vowels in constructions with dagesh associated with deḥiq (see §I.2.8.1.2.). Furthermore, long vowels in closed syllables in words read with a quick tempo were particularly vulnerable to contract due to their suboptimal structure. In the Karaite transcriptions, for example, a long vowel in a closed syllable in a word bound by maqqef to what follows is sometimes transcribed without a mater lectionis, reflecting the shortening of the vowel, e.g.
(Genizah MS 13, Khan 1990a, 13 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 113.3 ‘majesty’)
(Genizah MS 13, Khan 1990a, 13 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 112.3 ‘wealth’)
252This potential contraction would have been prevented by reading the shewa as vocalic.
In forms with suffixes such as it could be hypothesized that the prolonged timing of the gemination resulted in a corresponding quickening of reading of the rest of the word.
With regard to the rules relating to the reading of forms from the root ך׳׳רב , in a form without the stress before the resh such as (Gen. 27.34) the resh may have been weaker than in a form in which the stress is placed before the resh, such as
(Jer. 4.2), and this motivated a reading with vocalic shewa that made the sonorant resh more salient in the first type of form.
I.2.5.7.6. Eliphelehu
In A a ḥaṭef pataḥ is written on the pe after a long vowel in the proper name [vƐːʔƐˌliːfaˈleːhuː] ‘and ‘Eliphelehu’ (Lַ
1 Chron. 15.18). This indicates that the shewa was read as vocalic although it is preceded by a long vowel. The etymology of this name is not fully clear (possibly: ‘God distinguishes him’ < הלפ + לא ). The vocalic shewa evidently reflects the interpretation of the name as a compound with a morphological division after the initial element
I.2.5.8. Vocalic Shewa after Short Vowel Phonemes
253A shewa in the middle of a word on a consonant without dagesh after a short vowel is normally silent and syllabified with the consonant that precedes it, e.g.,
[mam.ˈR̟eː] (Gen. 13.18) ‘Mamre’
254In some circumstances, however, a consonant with shewa after a short vowel is syllabified in the onset of the following syllable. In such cases, the preceding short vowel is lengthened in compensation. This applies to the following cases.
I.2.5.8.1. The Definite Article
255When the definite article is attached to a word beginning with the sonorant consonant mem with shewa, the gemination of the mem expected after the article is often lost, but the mem is syllabified with what follows, e.g.
[haːmaðabˈbeːeR̟] ‘the one speaking’ (Gen. 45.12)
256As can be seen, the pataḥ of the article is lengthened by compensation. This can be analysed as the replication of the short /a/ phoneme to take the place of /m/, i.e.
/ham.mðab.bē.r/ > /haa.mðab.bē.r/
257This compensatory lengthening is regularly marked by a gaʿya sign in the manuscripts. Yeivin (1980, 257–264) refers to the gaʿya in his context as a ‘phonetic gaʿya’, i.e. it reflects lengthening for the sake of resyllabification rather than musical cantillation. A pataḥ in an unstressed syllable followed by shewa would otherwise be read as a short vowel in a closed syllable. As with the case of a shewa on resh after the article (§I.2.5.7.4.), here also the motivation for this syllabification is morphological. Placing the mem in the syllable following that of the article creates a prosodic division between the article and the stem of the word following it. The compensatory lengthening, moreover, makes the article bimoraic and so brings it into line with its normal weight in other contexts, i.e. [hVC] or [hVV].
258This resyllabification and compensatory lengthening do not take place in all cases where the gemination in mem is lost after the article. According to Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, the length of the word is a conditioning factor:
- 135 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.13.1.
In words containing not more than five letters the shewa is vocalic, as in
‘he who is impoverished in respect to offering’ (Isa. 40.20),
‘the one speaking’ (Gen. 45.12, etc.), except for one case, namely
‘this madman’ (2 Kings 9.11).135
In all such words in L a gaʿya occurs on the pataḥ after the he, with the exception of ( 2 Kings 9.11). In A the vocalic shewa in such forms with an article is represented by ḥaṭef pataḥ, e.g. (Isa. 40.20), ( 2 Sam. 14.10), but in ( 2 Kings 9.11) simple shewa is marked, reflecting the fact that it was read as silent.
259Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ was referring to cases where the article is not preceded by a prefixed preposition. There are more exceptions among forms that have such prepositions before the article, e.g.
L, A: ‘in the stronghold’ (1 Chron. 11.7)
L, A: ‘to the stronghold’ (1 Chron. 12.9)
L, A: ‘to the choirmaster’ (Psa. 4.1, and passim)
L, A: ‘for destiny’ (Isa. 65.11)
As in the shewa in these words without gaʿya was silent. The passage in Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ continues:
- 136 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.13.1.
As for words beginning with he and mem that have more than five letters, … when the accent is on the fourth letter, the shewa is vocalic, for example,
‘those who wait’ (Job 3.21),
‘those who remove’ (Amos 6.3), and the like.136
Again A has ḥaṭef pataḥ in the cited words In the medieval manuscripts words fitting the description in this passage have gaʿya and vocalic shewa (indicated by ḥaṭef pataḥ in the extant sections of A), with only a few exceptions, e.g.
‘the midwife’ (Gen. 35.17) and, if the vowel letter is ignored,
‘the singer’ (L and A, 1 Chron. 6.18), which do not have gaʿya and so the shewa was silent.
260With regard to longer words, Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ states the following:
- 137 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.13.1.
As for words beginning with he and mem that have more than five letters, the rule concerning these is that if the accent is on the fifth letter or later, the shewa is silent, for example
‘those who speak’ (Exod. 6.27),
‘those that curse’ (Num. 5.19), apart from some exceptions that deviate from this rule, for example
‘those who seek’ (Exod. 4.19, etc.).137
- 138 A similar list is cited in the treatise on the shewa (ed. Levy 1936, כט).
In a form such as the gaʿya reflects the lengthening of the pataḥ after the he but the shewa on the mem is silent. The key factor that conditions the reading of the shewa as silent emerges more clearly from Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, §14), where a more detailed list of forms with silent shewa on the mem is given. The full list of these forms with silent shewa is as follows:138
L: [ˌhaˑmðabbaˈR̟iːim] ‘those who speak’ (Exod. 6.27)
L: [ˌhaˑmjallaˈðoːoθ] ‘the midwives’ (Exod. 1.17)
L, A: [ˌhaˑmzammaˈR̟oːoθ] ‘the snuffers’ (2 Kings 25.14),
(Jer. 52.18)
L, A: [ˌhaˑm̟qɑttˁɑˈR̟iːim] ‘those who burn incense’ (2 Kings 23.5)
L: [vaˌhaˑmhaːlaˈliːim] ‘those who praise’ (A
2 Chron. 23.12)
L, A: [ˌhaˑmva∫∫aˈliːim] ‘those who cook’ (Ezek. 46.24)
L, A: [ˌhaˑmsaːħaˈ̟qoːoθ] ‘the ones (fpl) playing’ (1 Sam. 18.7)
L, A: [ˌhaˑmħulˈlɔːɔl] ‘the one profaned’ (Ezek. 36.23)
L, A: [ˌhaˑmvassaˈR̟oːoθ] ‘those who bear tidings’ (Psa. 68.12)
L: [ˌhaˑmʕassaˈR̟iːim] ‘those who collect tithes’ (Neh. 10.38)
L: [ˌhaˑmʔɔːR̟aˈR̟iːim] ‘those that curse’ (Num. 5.19)
L: [ˌhaˑm∫oːR̟aˈR̟iːim] ‘the singers’ (Ezra 2.41)
L, A: [ˌhaˑmsˁɑfsˁɑˈfiːim] ‘those who chirp’ (Isa. 8.19)
L, A: [ˌhaˑmja∫∫aˈR̟iːim] ‘those who make straight’ (Prov. 9.15)
L, A: [ˌhaˑmʕu∫∫ɔːˈ̟qɔː] ‘the oppressed’ (Isa. 23.12)
L, A: [ˌhaˑm̟qabbaˈR̟iːim] ‘those who bury’ (Ezek. 39.15)
L: [ˌhaˑmhallaˈχiːim] ‘those who move’ (Ecc. 4.15)
L, A: [ˌhaˑm̟qɑttˁɑˈR̟oːoθ] ‘ (altars) for burning incense’ (2 Chron. 30.14)
261As can be seen, A, in the portions that are extant, always marks the mem with a simple shewa sign.
The vast majority of the forms in this list have the syllable structure that is associated with the so-called minor gaʿya. This is a musical secondary stress that occurs predominantly in words with disjunctive accents on a short vowel in a closed syllable. It occurs predominantly on a syllable that is separated from the stressed syllable by another closed syllable, which in turn is followed by vocal shewa or by an open syllable followed by a ḥaṭef with an identical quality. These syllabic patterns may be represented thus: and
Examples of each of these are:
[ˌhaˑkkʰaR̟maˈliːiθ] ‘the woman of Carmel’ (1 Sam. 27.3)
[ˌniˑθħakkʰaˈmɔː] ‘let us deal wisely’ (Exod. 1.10) ַ
[ˌhaˑmmaːħaˈnƐː] ‘the camp’ (Gen. 50.9)
- 139 Yeivin (1980, 244–245). For more details concerning the minor gaʿya see §I.2.8.2.2.
[ˌmiˑ∫tʰaːħaˈviːim] ‘prostrating (mpl) themselves’ (Gen. 37.9).139
262There is evidence that the duration of the vowel lengthened by minor gaʿya was less than that of a long vowel in an open syllable or of a vowel in a syllable with the main stress (§I.2.8.2.). It appears not to have been fully bimoraic and did not induce the insertion of an epenthetic vowel or resyllabification of the consonant in the coda with the next syllable. For this reason, the vowel is transcribed with the IPA symbol for half-long [CVˑC].
263Minor gaʿya also occurs less consistently on a range of other closely related structures, e.g.
(with vocalic shewa additional to the
pattern) ‘the Canaanite woman’ (1 Chron. 2.3)
(with a vowel of different quality before the ḥaṭef) ‘and they fought’ (Josh. 10.36)
264It very rarely occurs on a syllable that is separated from the accent by only one syllable, e.g.
‘a conspiracy is found’ (Jer. 11.9).
Most of the cases where the shewa on the mem is silent after the gaʿya that are cited in Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim have the syllabic patterns that are suitable for minor gaʿya, e.g. [ˌhaˑmsˁɑfsˁɑˈfiːim] ‘those who chirp’ (Isa. 8.19),
[ˌhaˑmðabbaˈR̟iːim] ‘those who speak’ (Exod. 6.27) and as
[ˌhaˑmsaːħaˈ̟qoːoθ] ‘the ones (fpl) playing’ (1 Sam. 18.7). In such cases, therefore, it can be assumed that the gaʿya is the musical minor gaʿya. The reading with musical minor gaʿya in such forms evidently outranked the morphologically motivated syllabification that conditioned the reading of the shewa as vocalic.
Two of the forms cited by Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim as cases with silent shewa under the mem have conjunctive accents, viz. (L and A) ‘the snuffers’ (2 Kings 25.14),
(L and A) ‘those who burn incense’ (2 Kings 23.5). As remarked, minor gaʿya does not commonly occur on forms with conjunctive accents and so they must be considered to be not fully optimal for it. Some of the cited forms, moreover, have syllable structures that are not fully optimal for minor gaʿya, e.g.
(L) ‘those that curse’ (Num. 5.19),
(L) ‘the singers’ (Ezra 2.41), in which the vowel in the second open syllable is not of the same quality as the following vocalic shewa. Two of the cited cases have a syllable structure that deviates more radically from the one that is optimal for minor gaʿya, viz. the puʿal participles
(L and A) ‘the oppressed’ (Isa. 23.12) and
(L and A) ‘the one profaned’ (L and A, Ezek. 36.23). By contrast, the puʿal participle
‘the consecrated’ (A
Ezek. 48.11), which is identical in syllable structure to
has a vocalic shewa.
Forms cited by Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim as cases that have vocalic shewa include a construction with a disjunctive accent that has the main accent on the fifth letter but has a syllable structure that is not optimal for minor gaʿya, viz. (L) ‘those who seek’ (Exod. 4.19), in which the shewa on the qof is silent. An analogous case is
(L) ‘and those who fill’ (A
Isa. 65.11). The cited forms with vocalic shewa, confirmed by the occurrence of ḥaṭef pataḥ in the extant portions of A, include also cases that have a syllable structure optimal for minor gaʿya but have a conjunctive accent, which is not optimal for minor gaʿya, e.g.
L: ‘those who speak’ (A:
2 Chron. 33.18)
L: ‘those that send’ (A:
2 Chron. 32.31)
L, A: ‘the ones abhorring’ (Mic. 3.9)
- 140 The Treatise on the Shewa in the Genizah manuscript CUL Or 1080.13.3.2, fol. 2r; cf. Yeivin (1968, (...)
Also cited is (L) ‘the lepers’ (A
2 Kings 7.8), which has a conjunctive accent and a syllable structure that is not optimal for minor gaʿya. The list of forms with vocalic shewa includes
‘those who lap’. A version of the rule specifies
which indicates that the two occurrences of this word in Jud. 7, (verses 6 and 7) are intended.140 In L and also L17, written by Samuel ben Jacob, the scribe of L (Phillips 2020), marks a ḥaṭef pataḥ on both occurrences, but A marks ḥaṭef pataḥ only on the form in Jud. 7.7:
L, L17 (A
Jud. 7.6)
L, L17, A: (Jud. 7.7)
265In Jud. 7.6 the form has a conjunctive accent and in Jud. 7.7 a disjunctive. It has a syllable structure that is suitable for minor gaʿya but has vocalic shewa even when it has a disjunctive accent. It is not clear why A vocalizes the form in Jud. 7.6 with a simple shewa sign.
266A similar case is the following pair:
L: ‘those who spy’ (A:
Josh. 6.22)
L: (A
Josh. 6.23)
267These both have a structure optimal for minor gaʿya but the shewa is vocalic in both occurrences even though the second occurrence (Josh. 6.23) has a disjunctive accent.
In conclusion, there is no absolute rule or consistency relating to places where the shewa under the mem was read as silent. The somewhat arbitrary distribution of forms with silent shewa was fixed in particular streams of the Tiberian tradition. The gaʿya on such forms should be identified as a musical minor gaʿya, since the majority of forms have a structure that is optimal for minor gaʿya. The minor gaʿya was a secondary accent and so the short vowel was lengthened by stress rather than by the augmentation of the syllable at an underlying level. For this reason, the shewa was silent. The underlying syllabic structures of ‘the one speaking’ (Gen. 45.12) and
‘those who speak’ (Exod. 6.27) can be represented thus:
/haa.mðab.bē.r/ [haːmaðabˈbeːeR̟]
/ham.ðab.brī.m/ [ˌhaˑmðabbaˈR̟iːim]
268Some words beginning with the article + mem with shewa (ְַ ה ַ מ ) that consist of more than five letters and are stressed on the fifth letter or later are not marked with a gaʿya in the manuscripts, suggesting that the pataḥ was pronounced short and the shewa was silent, e.g.
L: [ham̟qu∫∫ɔːˈR̟oːoθ] ‘the ones bound’ (Gen. 30.41)
L: [hamʔɔddɔːˈmiːim] ‘those dyed red’ (Exod. 39.34)
L: [hamʔɔːR̟aˈR̟iːim] ‘the cursing’ (Num. 5.22)
L: [hamˌʔoːR̟ɔːˈ∫ɔː] ‘the betrothed one’ (Deut. 22.25)
According to Kitāb al-Khilaf, there were differences between Ben Asher and Ben Naftali regarding the reading of words beginning with with minor gaʿya. In Exod. 6.27, for example, it is reported that Ben Asher read
without minor gaʿya whereas Ben Naftali read this
with minor gaʿya (ed. Lipschütz 1965, י ). In this case, L corresponds to the reading of Ben Naftali (
‘the ones who speak’). Ben Asher read the shewa on the mem in the word
in Josh. 6.22 and Josh. 6.23 as vocalic, but Ben Naftali regularly read it as silent (ed. Lipschütz 1965, 20 , ).
269When the pataḥ of the article befor מְ has gaʿya, the Karaite Arabic transcriptions generally represent it as long by transcribing it with mater lectionis ʾalif, e.g.
[haːmazimmɔːˈθɔː] (BL Or 2549 fol. 82r, 7 | L [BHS]:
A
Jer. 11.15 ‘the wickedness’)
[haːmava̟qˈ∫iːim] (BL Or 2544, fol. 111v, 12 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 4.19 ‘those who seek’)
[ˌhaˑmjallaˈðoːoθ] (BL Or 2542, fol. 43v, 6 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 1.17 ‘these, who help to give birth’)
270In the manuscript BL Or 2555, a vocalic shewa is explicitly marked with a pataḥ sign and so forms with vocalic and silent shewa are distinguished. This corresponds to the distribution of vocalic and silent shewa discussed above, e.g.
[haːma∫ulˈlɔːɔ∫] (BL Or 2555 fol. 29r, 3 | L [BHS]:
phonetic gaʿya and vocalic shewa, Ecc. 4.12 ‘the threefold’)
[ˌhaˑmhallaˈχiːim] (BL Or 2555 fol. 33r, 3 | L [BHS]:
minor gaʿya and silent shewa, Ecc. 4.15 ‘those who move’)
271It is significant that in some manuscripts a phonetic gaʿya on ְַ ה ַ מ is neither marked in the manuscript nor represented in the transcription where it occurs in L and A, e.g.
[hamhalˈleːeχ] (BL Or 2551 fol. 78v, 6 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 104.3 ‘he who walks’)
ּ
[ham∫alˈleːaχ] (BL Or 2551 fol. 81v, 3 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 104.10 ‘he who sends’)
- 141 Named the Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus in the facsimile edition by Strack (1876).
272This evidently reflects other variant streams of the Tiberian tradition in which the shewa was pronounced silent without lengthening of the pataḥ in these forms. Further evidence for this can be found in manuscripts with Babylonian vocalization that reflect a reading that has converged very closely with the Tiberian tradition. Of particular relevance is the manuscript I Firkovitch Evr. I B 3, containing the Latter Prophets, which distinguishes length of vowels in closed syllables by means of the compound Babylonian sign system (§I.2.5.1.).141 Where L and A have gaʿya on the pataḥ of the definite article, the pataḥ in I Firkovitch Evr. I B 3 is sometimes represented as long. In several cases, however, the pataḥ is represented as short (Yeivin 1985, 413), e.g.
[hamleːʔˈɔː] ‘the one full’ (L:
Amos 2.13)
[hamva̟qˈ∫iːim] ‘those who seek’ (L:
A: Jer. 11.21)
[hamθaːʕaˈviːim] ‘the ones abhorring’ (L, A:
Mic. 3.9)
Such manuscripts with Babylonian vocalization, the Karaite transcriptions and the lists of differences between Ben Asher and Ben Naftali provide evidence of degrees of variation in the Tiberian tradition both within the Tiberian school and outside of the inner circles of the Tiberian Masoretic school. The variation relating to the particular feature in question appears to have been arbitrary. Also within the inner Tiberian tradition, as we have seen, there was some degree of arbitrariness in the distribution of the vocalic and silent shewa in this feature. A particular distribution containing some apparently arbitrary inconsistency (e.g. the silent shewa in Kings 9.11) became fixed in the tradition.
273The gemination of a mem with shewa after the definite article is retained in numerous cases, e.g.
‘the kings’ (Gen. 36.31)
‘the doorposts’ (Exod. 12.7)
‘the lampstand’ (Exod. 25.31)
‘the leper’ (Lev. 14.2)
274The vocalization of the definite article exhibits different patterns before other consonants that have a tendency to lose gemination when vocalized with shewa, i.e. the sonorants nun, yod, lamed, the sibilants and qof.
275Gemination is occasionally lost in nun and the pataḥ is marked with gaʿya, e.g.
L: [vahaːna∫amˈmoːoθ] ‘and the desolated ones’ (A
Ezek. 36.35)
276The vocalization with ḥaṭef pataḥ in A demonstrates that the shewa was vocalic.
277The lengthening of the pataḥ in such cases is represented by mater lectionis ʾalif in the Karaite transcriptions, even when a gaʿya sign is not marked in the transcription manuscript, e.g.
[haːna∫amˈmoːoθ] (BL Or 2549 fol. 106v, 15 | L
[BHS]:
Jer. 33.10 ‘those that are desolate’)
In ‘with bronze fetters’ (Jud. 16.21) both L and A have simple shewa, so the reading of the shewa is not clear. In many cases the gemination is retained, e.g.
‘the young men’ (Gen. 14.24)
‘the Nephilim’ (Gen. 6.4)
278Gemination is sometimes lost in yod, but the shewa is silent and there is no compensatory lengthening, e.g.
‘the children’ (Gen. 33.5)
‘the Jebusite’ (Josh. 15.8, etc.)
‘for the upright’ (Psa. 112.4)
‘on the curtain’ (Exod. 26.5)
In several places the gemination is retained, e.g.
‘the wild goats’ (1 Sam. 24.3)
‘the Jews’ (2 Kings 25.25)
‘the Greeks’ (Joel 4.6)
Lamed loses gemination after the definite article in the frequent phrase ‘the Levites’ (Exod. 6.25, etc.) without compensatory lengthening. Elsewhere the lamed is geminated, e.g.
‘the frankincense’ (Lev. 6.8)
‘Lebanon’ (Josh. 9.1)
279The sibilants generally have gemination after the article. It is lost in a few words. In some such cases, the shewa is vocalic and there is compensatory lengthening, e.g.
L: [baːsɔʕɔːˈR̟ɔː] ‘by the whirlwind’ (A
2 Kings 2.1, 11)
L: [laː∫afanˈniːim] ‘for the badgers’ (A
Psa. 104.18)
L: [vahaː∫afatˈtʰiːim] ‘and the hooks’ (A
Ezek. 40.43)
280In other cases the shewa is silent and there is no compensatory lengthening, e.g.
L, A: ‘the frames’ (1 Kings 7.28)
L: ‘the elders’ (A:
1 Kings. 21.8)
L: ‘in the swelling’ (Lev. 13.10)
As for the word ‘the frogs’ (Exod. 8.9, etc.), a surviving fragment of A of Exod. 8.9 has a ḥaṭef pataḥ under the ṣade of this word indicating that the shewa was vocalic despite the fact that its structure is appropriate for minor gaʿya.
281Qof generally retains gemination, e.g.
‘the harlot’ (Gen. 38.21)
‘the boards’ (Exod. 26.15)
L: ‘the small ones’ (A
Isa. 36.9)
L, A: ‘in the battle’ (2 Sam. 17.11)
L, A: ‘for the battle’ (Psa. 144.1).
I.2.5.8.2. Interrogative He
282When interrogative he is prefixed to a word beginning with a letter with shewa, the interrogative he is often vocalized with pataḥ and the shewa is silent, e.g.
[hamˈʕɑːɑtˁ] ‘Is it a small matter?’ (Gen. 30.15)
[hamʕɔːˈR̟aːaθ] ‘Has this house become a den of robbers?’ (Jer. 7.11)
[haχzoːˈnɔː] ‘Should he treat our sister as a harlot?’ (Gen. 34.31)
[halhɔR̟ˈʁeːniː] ‘Do you intend to kill me?’ (Exod. 2.14)
[haljɔR̟ˈ∫eːnuː] ‘Have you invited us here to impoverish us?’ (Jud. 14.15)
[havˈsoːoð] ‘Have you listened to the council of God? ’ (Job 15.8)
There are a few exceptions, e.g.
[havˈʕaːað] ‘Can he judge through the deep darkness?’ (Job 22.13)
283On some occasions, a phonetic gaʿya is marked on the pataḥ and the shewa is read as vocalic. One such case is listed in §14 of Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim:
L: [haːmasˁɔːˈθaːniː] ‘have you found me?’ (A
1 Kings 21.20)
284As is the case with the phonetic gaʿya on the definite article, the purpose of this is likely to be to create a syllabic division between the interrogative particle and the following word in order to mark a clear morphological division. When the initial consonant of the word is syllabified in the onset of the following syllable, the pataḥ is lengthened by compensation:
/ham.sˁɔ̄.θɔ̄.nī/ > /haa.msˁɔ̄.θɔ̄.nī/ [haː.ma.sˁɔː.ˈθaː.niː].
285In the extant portions of A, the vocalic reading of the shewa is made explicit by a ḥatef sign. Further examples:
L: [haːmaχaˈsƐː] ‘Shall I hide?’ (Gen. 18.17)
L: [haːvaR̟ɔːˈχɔː] ‘one blessing?’ (Gen. 27.38)
L: [haːna̟qalˈlɔː] ‘Is it a little thing?’ (A:
1 Sam. 18.23)
L: [haː∫aχaħˈtˁƐːƐm] ‘Have you forgotten?’ (A:
Jer. 44.9)
L: [haːθa̟qa∫ˈ∫eːerˁ] ‘Can you bind?’ (A:
Job 38.31)
L: [haːθa∫alˈlaːaħ] ‘Can you send forth?’ (A:
Job 38.35)
L: [haːθamalˈleː] ‘Can you fill?’ (A:
Job 40.31)
286In a few cases where gaʿya is marked on interrogative he both L and A have a simple shewa on the following consonant:
L, A: ‘Will the Lord spurn forever?’ (Psa. 77.8)
L, A: ‘Will you play with him?’ (Job 40.29)
287In the first case, the lack of a ḥaṭef in A is most likely due to the fact that there was no suitable ḥaṭef to represented the short [o] quality of the shewa before the guttural: [haːloʕoːlɔːˈmiːim].
288The lengthening of the pataḥ of the interrogative particle is reflected by mater lectionis ʾalif in the Karaite Arabic transcriptions, e.g.
[haːθa̟qa∫ˈ∫eːeR̟] (BL Or 2552 fol. 81r, 15 | L [BHS]:
Job. 38.31 ‘will you bind?’)
[haːθamalˈleː] (BL Or 2552 fol. 85r, 9 | L [BHS]:
Job. 40.31 ‘will you fill?’)
[haːθasaːħƐq-ˈboː] (BL Or 2552 fol. 84v, 11 | L [BHS], A
Job. 40.29 ‘will you play with him?’)
289The early Tiberian biblical codices exhibit some degree of variation, e.g.
L: without gaʿya [hamʕɔːˈR̟aːaθ] ‘Has this house become a den of robbers?’ (A
[haːmɔʕɔːˈR̟aːaθ], Jer. 7.11)
290Some variation is found also in the Tiberian tradition reflected by manuscripts with Babylonian vocalization, such as I Firkovitch Evr. I B 3, containing the Latter Prophets, which distinguishes length of vowels in closed syllables by means of the compound Babylonian sign system:
L: [haː∫aχaħˈtˁƐːƐm] ‘Have you forgotten?’ (A:
I Firk. Evr. I B 3
[ha∫kaħˈtʰaːam], Jer. 44.9)
291Another strategy to mark clear a morphological division between the interrogative particle and what follows is to geminate the consonant following the particle (§I.3.1.8.), e.g.
[hakkʰɑsˁɑːʕɑ̟qɔːˈθɔːɔh] ‘whether it according to its outcry’ (Gen. 18.21)
[hakkʰaˈθoːnƐθ] ‘acknowledge now whether it is your son’s robe’ (Gen. 37.32)
[habbamaːħaˈniːim] ‘is it in camps?’ (Num. 13.19)
[hakkʰamakˈkʰaːaθ] ‘Has he struck him as the one who struck him?’ (Isa. 27.7)
[haR̟R̟iʔiːˈθƐːƐm] ‘Have you seen?’ (1 Sam. 10.24)
I.2.5.8.3. Two Identical Consonants
292As remarked in §I.2.5.7.3., a shewa that occurs on the first of two identical consonants after a short vowel was read as silent in the Tiberian tradition, e.g.
[hinˈniː] ‘behold me’ (Gen. 6.17)
293On many occasions, however, the vowel before the identical consonants in such forms is lengthened and the shewa is read as vocalic. The lengthening of the vowel is, in principle, marked by a gaʿya sign in the early codices. In the extant portions of A, the vocalic reading of the shewa is generally indicated explicitly by marking a ḥaṭef pataḥ sign. A ḥaṭef pataḥ is sometimes found also in L, but most of these are misshapen and are clearly the result of a later correction, e.g.
L, A: [sˁiːlaˈloː] ‘his shade’ (Job 40.22)
L, A: [̟qiːlaˈloːoθ] ‘the curse of’ (Jud. 9.57)
L: [miːlaˈlaːj giːlaˈlaːj] ‘Milalai, Gilalai’ (Neh. 12.36)
294The main motivation for reading the shewa as vocalic was doubtless to ensure that the two identical letters in contact were given their full articulation and not slurred together. The insertion of a vowel between them would have made each more salient. This was achieved by augmenting the preceding syllable with a vowel mora, which would have conditioned a resyllabification. The gaʿya can be identified with what Yeivin calls a phonetic gaʿya. This was, in essence, a mark of ‘mora-augmenting’ lengthening:
/sˁil.lō/ > /sˁii.llō/ [sˁiː.laloː]
295The normal practice in L, however, is for a phonetic gaʿya to be marked on the vowel and a simple shewa sign on the first of the identical consonants. In the extant portions of A, a ḥaṭef pataḥ is usually marked in such cases, e.g.
L: [R̟iːvaˈvoːoθ] ‘the ten thousands of’ (Num. 10.36)
L: [baR̟iːvaˈvoːoθ] ‘with ten thousands of’ (A
Mic. 6.7)
L: [baħaːsˁɑˈsˁoːon tʰɔːˈmɔːɔR̟] ‘in Hazazontamar’ (Gen. 14.7)
L: [wufiːlaˈloː] ‘and he will mediate for him’ (A:
1 Sam. 2.25)
L: [ħaːlaˈleː] ‘the slain of’ (A:
1 Sam. 17.52)
L: [ba̟qaːlaˈloː] ‘when he cursed’ (A:
2 Sam. 16.7)
L: [maː-ttiθhaːlaˈliː] ‘why do you boast?’ (A:
Jer. 49.4)
L: [baʁƐːlaˈleː] ‘the dung of’ (A:
Ezek. 4.12)
L: [∫iːmaˈmoːoθ] ‘devastations of’ (A:
Ezek. 35.9)
L: [jiːlaˈlaːaθ] ‘the howling of’ (A:
Zech. 11.3)
L: [baʕaːnaˈniː] ‘when I bring clouds’ (A:
Gen. 9.14)
L: [ħɔːnaˈneːniː] ‘be gracious to me’ (A:
Psa. 9.14)
296In a few cases, a gaʿya is marked but a simple shewa is written instead of ḥaṭef pataḥ in both L and A, e.g.
L, A: [lƐħƐːnaˈnɔːɔh] ‘in order to favour it (fs)’ (Psa. 102.14)
L, A: [haːlaˈluː] ‘praise’ (Jer. 20.13)
L, A: [vihiθpʰaːlaˈluː] ‘and pray’ (Jer. 29.7)
L, A: [haːlaluː-ˈjɔːɔh] ‘praise the Lord’ (Psa. 106.48)
297Sporadically the gaʿya is omitted, though A has a ḥaṭef pataḥ, e.g.
A: [naʁaː∫aˈ∫uː] ‘we grope’ (L:
Isa. 59.10)
L: [gƐːlaˈleː] ‘the dung of’ (A:
Ezek. 4.15)
L: [jahaːlaˈlƐːƐkkʰɔː] ‘and it will praise you’ (A:
Isa. 38.18)
In the following example, the gaʿya is omitted in both L and A, with a ḥaṭef pataḥ indicating the vocalic shewa. There is a musical gaʿya on the shewa at the beginning of the word, which is normally associated with syllabic structures with a vocalic shewa before the main stress, i.e. (§I.2.9.).
L, A: [ˌkʰaˑʁƐːlaˈloː] ‘like his dung’ (Job 20.7)
298In such cases, the ḥaṭef pataḥ is often omitted in L, e.g.
L: [ˌjaˑhaːlaˈluː] ‘they praise’ (A:
Psa. 74.21)
L: [ˌjaˑhaːlaˈluː] ‘they praise you’ (A:
Psa. 84.5)
L: [ˌjaˑmaː∫aˈ∫uː] ‘they grope’ (A:
Job 5.14)
- 142 See the discussion concerning the lack of phonetic gaʿya in such forms in Phillips (2020).
When the word contains a musical minor gaʿya, in L there is often no marking of either the phonetic gaʿya or the ḥaṭef pataḥ. Likewise in A the phonetic gaʿya is omitted and also the ḥaṭef pataḥ in some examples. As was the case with the musical gaʿya on shewa, the musical minor gaʿya is associated with syllabic patterns that have a vocalic shewa before the main stress, i.e. (§I.2.8.2.2.), so the marking of the minor gaʿya was evidently felt by the vocalizers to be sufficient to ensure that the reader read the shewa on the first of the two identical consonants as vocalic:142
L, A: [ˌvaˑ̟qaːlaˈluː] ‘and they cursed’ (Jud. 9.27)
L, A: [viˌjiˑθhaːlaˈluː] ‘and they will glory’ (Isa. 45.25)
L: [ˌvaˑjhaːlaˈluː] ‘and they praised’ (A:
2 Chr. 29.30)
L: [ˌhiˑθhaːlaˈluː] ‘glory!’ (A:
Psa. 105.3)
- 143 See Heijmans (2018, 99).
299Some early manuscripts do not mark minor gaʿya in a number of the forms just listed, but mark the shewa as vocalic either by a phonetic gaʿya before the shewa or by a ḥaṭef pataḥ, e.g.143
JTS 232/ENA 346: [vijiθhaːlaˈluː] (Isa. 45.25)
C: [vijiθhaːlaˈluː] (Isa. 45.25)
300Both phonetic gaʿya and ḥaṭef pataḥ are omitted in L and A in some words that do not have a musical gaʿya but which elsewhere are normally read with a vocalic shewa. This applies to some words that are attested in both L and A, and to some that are attested only in L, e.g.
L, A: ‘they praise him’ (Psa. 107.32)
L: ‘he who curses you’ (Ecc. 7.21)
301In a few cases, the vowel before the first of two identical consonants is lengthened by a retracted accent. The shewa was pronounced vocalic here also, as demonstrated by its being represented by a ḥaṭef pataḥ:
L: [ˌʔaːlalaj] ‘woe is me’ (A:
Mic. 7.1)
L: [ˈhaːlaluː] ‘praise the Lord’ (A:
Psa. 135.1)
302In all these cases, the Karaite transcriptions represent the lengthened vowel preceding the first of the two identical consonants as long by an Arabic mater lectionis. This includes cases in which L and/or A do not mark a gaʿya or ḥaṭef pataḥ, e.g.
[ma̟qaːlaˈlƐːχɔː] (BL Or 2555 fol. 72v, 12 | L [BHS]:
Ecc. 7.21 ‘he who curses you’)
[jahaːlaːˈlƐːƐkkɔː] (BL Or 2548 fol. 32v, 12 | L [BHS]:
A:
Isa. 38.18 ‘and it (msg) will praise you)’
[gƐːlaˈleː] (BL Or 2549 fol. 149r, 11 | L [BHS]:
A
Ezek. 4.15 ‘dung of’)
303Lengthening by retraction of the accent is likewise represented in the transcriptions, e.g.
[ˈhaːlaluː ˈjɔːɔh] (BL Or 2551 fol. 99v, 1 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 135.1 ‘praise!’)
- 144 Cf. Heijmans (2018, 102).
304The manuscript I Firkovitch Evr. I B 3 (Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus), which represents the Tiberian tradition in compound Babylonian vocalization, represents as long some vowels before a pair of identical consonants in forms that do not have a phonetic gaʿya in L and A, e.g.144
L, A: [viˌjiˑθhaːlaˈluː] ‘and they will glory’ (I Firk. Evr. I B 3
[vijiθhaːlaˈluː] Isa. 45.25)
- 145 Ed. Lipschütz (1965, ז).
305The Kitāb al-Khilaf records some differences between Ben Asher and Ben Naftali in the lengthening of the short vowels before two identical consonants, e.g.145
Ben Asher: ‘your curse’ (Gen. 27.13)
Ben Naftali:
- 146 Cf. Heijmans (2018, 103–4).
306Some differences are found across the manuscripts. In I Firkovitch Evr. I B 3, which represents the Tiberian tradition with compound Babylonian vocalization, for example, some of the vowels that are marked as long by a phonetic gaʿya or ḥaṭef pataḥ in A and/or L are represented as short, e.g.146
L: [la∫iːmaˈmoː] ‘into a desolation’ (A
I Firk. Evr. I B 3
[la∫imˈmɔː], Ezek. 35.7)
L: [̟qiːnaˈnuː] ‘they nested’ (A
I Firk. Evr. I B 3
[̟qinˈnuː], Ezek. 31.6)
307In some cases, I Firk. Evr. I B 3 marks a dagesh in the following consonant, indicating explicitly that it was closed syllable:
L: [ma̟qaːlaˈlaːavniː] ‘they curse me’ (A
I Firk. Evr. I B 3
[ma̟qallaˈlaːavniː], Jer. 15.10)
L: [maħaːlaˈlƐːχɔː] ‘those who slay you’ (A
I Firk. Evr. I B 3
[maħallalaːχɔː], Ezek. 28.9)
308Conversely, some vowels that are short in L and A are represented as long in I Firk. Evr. I B 3, e.g.
L, A: [ħalleː] ‘the slain of’ (I Firk. Evr. I B 3
[ˈħaːlaleː], Isa. 22.2)
- 147 Cf. Heijmans (2018, 102).
309In I Firk. Evr. I B 3 this word is marked with a retracted accent ( ח ֣ ילל ) rather than being unstressed as in L and A, which would have lengthened the vowel.147
I.2.5.8.4. Conjunctive Vav
310A silent shewa after a word-initial conjunctive vav is sometimes made vocalic by lengthening the vav with a phonetic gaʿya, e.g.
L: [wuː̟qaˈR̟ɔːʔuː] ‘and read’ (A
Isa. 34.16)
311In such cases, A regularly marks the vocalic shewa with ḥaṭef pataḥ. A ḥaṭef pataḥ is sometimes marked also in L.
312The marking of an Arabic sukūn in some transcriptions after vav without a gaʿya demonstrates that the shewa in such forms was pronounced silent, e.g.
رو ْ يع [wuR̟ˈʕiː] (BL Or 2554 fol. 35r, 2 | L [BHS]:
Cant. 1.8 ‘and graze! ’)
و ُ ق ْ شوذ [wu̟qˈðoːo∫] (BL Or 2548 fol. 50v, 8ַ| L [BHS]:
Isa. 41.20 ‘and holy of’)
313The reading of the shewa as vocalic after a lengthened vav separates two consonants that are relatively weak by their nature. These include sonorants, fricatives (frequently sibilants), gutturals and qof. The motivation, therefore, appears to have been orthoepic. Two weak consonants in contact do not constitute an optimal boundary between syllables (Vennemann 1988). They were split by a vowel to ensure that they were maximally salient:
L, A: ‘and regarding Zion’ (Psa. 87.5)
L, A: ‘the war of his heart’ (Psa. 55.22)
L, A: ‘and capture’ (Jud. 5.12)
L, A: ‘and seven’ (1 Kings 14.21)
L: ‘and to divide’ (Gen. 1.18)
L: ‘and the gold of’ (Gen. 2.12)
L: ּ ‘and like a garden’ (A:
Isa. 1.30)
L: ‘as far as I was able’ (A:
1 Chron. 29.2)
L: ‘and when they had finished’ (A:
2 Chron. 24.14)
L: ‘and close’ (A:
Isa. 26.20)
L: ‘and the merchandise of Ethiopia’ (A:
Isa. 45.14)
L: ‘and read’ (A:
Isa. 34.16)
L: ‘and send’ (A:
2 Kings 9.17)
L: ‘and let it cover us’ (A:
Jer. 3. 25)
314When the vocalic shewa occurs before a guttural with qameṣ, it is represented in A and sometimes also in L by ḥaṭef qameṣ, reflecting the assimilation of the shewa to the quality of the following vowel, e.g.
L, A: ‘and clean of hands’ (Job 17.9)
L: ‘and refresh yourself’ (A
1 Kings 13.7)
L: ‘and cry out’ (A
Jer. 22.20)
- 148 Dotan (1967, 258, 374), Ibn Nūḥ, Diqduq (ed. Khan 2000b, 36).
315According to some medieval sources, the shewa after a vav with gaʿya is silent in some phrases consisting of words joined by maqqef.148 The examples mentioned in these sources and several other cases with maqqef do not have ḥaṭef pataḥ in L or A, e.g.
L: [ˌwuˑðmeː-laˈχɔː] ‘make yourself similar’ (Cant. 8.14)
L, A: [ˌwuˑ∫laˑħ-ˈliː] ‘and send me’ (1 Chron. 2.7)
L, A: [ˌwuˑlχɔl-bɔːˈnƐːhɔː] ‘and to all her sons’ (1 Sam. 1.4)
L, A: [ˌwuˑlχɔl-hamma̟qoːˈmoːoθ] ‘and to all the places’ (1 Sam. 30.31)
L, A: [ˌwuˑlχɔl-gibˈboːoR̟] ‘and every warrior’ (1 Chron. 28.1)
L, A: [ˌwuˑ∫vaˑʕ-ˈR̟oːʁƐz] ‘and full of trouble’ (Job 14.1)
316The maqqef, however, is unlikely to be the key conditioning factor for the reading of the shewa as silent, since there are examples where a word with maqqef has a vocalic shewa after vav with gaʿya, e.g.
L, A: [wuː̟qaR̟ɔːɔv-libˈboː] ‘and the war of his heart’ (Psa. 55.22)
L: [wuːsaħaR̟-ˈkʰuːu∫] ‘and the merchandise of Ethiopia’ (A
Isa. 45.14)
- 149 Yeivin (1980, 247).
317It appears that in those cases where the shewa is silent the gaʿya is a musical minor gaʿya, which requires that the syllable in which the gaʿya occurs be closed (§I.2.8.2.2.).149 Minor gaʿya also occurs on vav in some cases that are single words, especially in those with a syllable structure that is suitable for minor gaʿya. In such cases A has a simple shewa sign, reflecting its reading as silent, e.g.
L, A: [ˌwuˑχlibˈboː] ‘and according to your heart’ (2 Sam. 7.21)
L, A: [ˌwuˑvmaʁzaˈrˁoːoθ] ‘and with axes of’ (2 Sam. 12.31)
L, A: [ˌwuˑvʁalloˈħoː] ‘and when he shaved’ (2 Sam. 14.26)
- 150 Ed. Lipschütz (1965, יב ,ה).
318Kitāb al-Khilaf mentions several differences between Ben Asher and Ben Naftali regarding the reading of the vav and the following shewa in the types of constructions discussed above. In some cases, the difference seems to be between reading a word or phrase with or without musical minor gaʿya. Minor gaʿya was, indeed, the subject of the majority of differences in Kitāb al-Khilaf. Examples:150
Ben Asher: (L:
‘and in every beast of’ Gen. 9.10)
Ben Naftali:
Ben Asher: (L:
‘and when Aaron set up’ Exod. 30.8)
Ben Naftali:
- 151 Ed. Lipschütz (1965, לה).
319In some cases, Ben Naftali read the vav with a phonetic gaʿya and the following shewa as vocalic where Ben Asher read vav without a gaʿya and the shewa as silent, e.g.151
Ben Asher: (L, A:
‘and my incense’ Ezek. 16.18)
Ben Naftali:
- 152 Ed. Lipschütz (1965, נ).
320In the case of the following example it appears that Ben Asher read the vav with a minor gaʿya and the shewa as silent whereas Ben Naftali read the vav with phonetic gaʿya and the shewa as vocalic:152
Ben Asher: (L, A;
‘and full of trouble’ Job 14.1)
Ben Naftali:
I.2.5.8.5. Elsewhere
321Also in other contexts, a silent shewa preceded by a short vowel is sometimes converted into a vocalic shewa by imposing a resyllabification by lengthening the short vowel by a phonetic gaʿya. As in the case of shewa after vav, which was discussed in the previous section, this typically occurs where the two consonants are relatively weak, in that they are sonorants, fricatives (especially sibilants), gutturals or qof. The motivation, therefore, is to repair a suboptimal syllable contact, by splitting the consonants with a vowel to make them more salient and syllabifying them as onsets, i.e. CVC. C > CVV. CV.C. In A the vocalic shewa is generally represented by ḥaṭef pataḥ. The lengthened vowel before the shewa is in most cases ḥireq or pataḥ. In some sporadic cases it is segol. Examples:
L: [jiːsˁɑħa̟q-ˈliː] ‘will laugh at me’ (Gen. 21. 6)
L: [ba∫iː̟qaˈθoːoθ] ‘in the troughs of’ (Gen. 30.38)
L: [haθiːmaˈloːoχ] ‘are you a king?’ (A:
Jer. 22.15)
L: [ħaː∫aR̟aθ-ˈmaːjim] ‘a gathering of water’ (A:
2 Sam. 22.12)
L: [biːsavɔχ-ˈʕeːesˁ] ‘in the thicket of trees’ (A: no gaʿya
Psa. 74.5)
322When the vocalic shewa occurs before a guttural with ḥireq, A sometimes represents the shewa with a ḥaṭef ḥireq sign, which reflects the regular assimilation of the quality of vocalic shewa to that of the vowel after the guttural (§I.2.5.1.), e.g.
A: [hiː∫iˈħiːθuː hiːθiˈʕiːvuː] ‘they have acted corruptly and have done abominable deeds’ (L:
Psa. 14.)
323Examples occur in which a vocalic shewa before a guttural with qameṣ is represented by ḥaṭef qameṣ, likewise reflecting vowel assimilation, e.g:
L: [niːvɔˈhɔːɔl] ‘hastening’ (A:
Prov. 28.22)
324In one case a ḥaṭef pataḥ occurs in A before a guttural with qameṣ, instead of the expected ḥaṭef qameṣ, e.g.
A: ‘hear!’ (L
Psa. 39.13)
Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan, 1967, §19), however, refers to the practice of some scribes to vocalize this word with ḥaṭef qameṣ
- 154 Ed. Levy (1936, כה).
The Treatise on the Shewa refers to the reading of the vocalic shewa in ‘my rock’ (2 Sam. 22.2, Psa. 18.3) as a ḥireq [saːliˈʕiː].154
325Where L has a simple shewa and A is not extant, the vocalic reading of the shewa can sometimes be established from Karaite transcriptions that mark vocalic shewa with an Arabic fatḥa vowel sign, e.g.
[maːmaθa̟qˈ̟qiːim] (BL Or 2554 fol. 65v, 1 | L [BHS]:
Cant. 5.16 ‘sweet things’)
326In some cases, the weak consonant with the vocalic shewa has lost original gemination, e.g.
L, A: [vattaʔaːlaˈsˁeːhuː] ‘and he urged him’ (Jud. 16.16,
)
L, A: [kʰiːnaˈrˁoːoθ] ‘Chinneroth’ (Josh. 11.2, <
)
327In many cases in the three books, A has a slanting merkha accent where L has a vertical gaʿya, e.g.
L: [tʰiːvaˈħaːaR̟] ‘you choose’ (A:
Psa. 65.5)
L: [tʰiːlaˈʕaːaʁ] ‘it mocks’ (A:
Prov. 30.17)
L: [liː∫oˈʔoːol] ‘for Sheol’ (A:
Psa. 49.15)
L: [ziːveˈħeː] ‘the sacrifices of’ (A:
Psa. 51.19)
L: [miːmaˈθiːim] ‘from men’ (A:
Psa. 17.14, <
)
L: [ʔƐːvaˈħaːaR̟] ‘I choose’ (A:
Job 29.25)
L: [ʔiːmaˈR̟oːoθ] ‘the promises of’ (A:
Psa. 12.7)
L: [ʔƐː̟qaˈR̟ɔː] ‘I call’ (A:
Psa. 18.7)
328In a few cases where A has a merkha, an original gaʿya has been corrected to a merkha in L, e.g.
L, A: ‘the men of’ (L first hand:
Job 34.10)
L, A: ‘and to my neighbours’ (L first hand:
Psa. 31.12)
329In the parallel passages of 2 Sam. 22 and Psa. 18, both manuscripts have gaʿya in the 2 Sam. 22 passage whereas in the Psa. 18 passage L has gaʿya and A has merkha:
L, A: ‘my rock’ (2 Sam. 22.2)
L: ‘my rock’ (A
Psa. 18.3)
330Examples such as these with merkha in A from the three books are referred to in §13 of Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967). The most satisfactory reading of this passage is the variant text that Dotan cites in the apparatus of his edition:
‘Every word that occurs that is lengthened by merkha and is stressed with an accent is extended by pataḥ’
- 155 This formulation of the rule is cited in the Treatise on the Shewa (ed. Levy, 1936, יד). When disc (...)
- 156 The term גרש and the verbal root גר׳׳ש is used elsewhere in Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim as a generic term t (...)
- 157 A later version of the passage, which Dotan adopts as his preferred text, refers to gaʿya: ‘Every (...)
331This, apparently original,155 version of the rule states that in words in the three books that have a merkha before a shewa in addition to a following main accent156 the shewa is read as a pataḥ (i.e. vocalic).157 The passage in Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim goes on to give four exceptions to this rule, in which the shewa is silent:
L: [ˌ∫ɔːɔmˈR̟ɔː] ‘preserve my life’ (A:
Psa. 86.2)
L: [ˌ∫ɔːɔvˈR̟ɔː] ‘it has broken my heart’ (A:
Psa. 69.21)
L: [ˌtˁɔːɔmˌnuː-ʁeːˈʔiːim] ‘arrogant men have hidden’ (A:
Psa. 140.6)
L: [ˌjiːR̟ˈʔaːaθ] ‘the fear of the Lord’ (A:
Prov. 8.13)
- 158 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ states that in some codices gaʿya is written slanting either to the right or to t (...)
In A all of these have merkha rather than gaʿya on the first syllable, and the rule in Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim is referring specifically to such cases with merkha. The first example (A Psa. 86.2) is an imperative form with a lengthened originally short qameṣ after the shin. On account of this lengthening and the silent shewa, it would have been pronounced in the same way as the 3fs. past verbal form
since this also had a silent shewa. Such past forms in A all have gaʿya on the first syllable:
(Psa. 119.167) ,
(Job 10.12). It is for this reason that they were not included in the exceptions, since the rule is referring only to forms with merkha.158 The merkha evidently marks a secondary stress. The second two exceptions (A:
Psa. 69.21; A:
Psa. 140.6) are past forms. As remarked, such past forms regularly had silent shewa after the long vowel. The exceptional feature here, therefore, is the fact that they contain merkha. The fourth exception (A:
Prov. 8.13) is evidently listed since a merkha occurs on an originally short ḥireq without the shewa being made vocalic as happens elsewhere.
- 159 Ed. Lipschütz (1965, לה).
332Kitāb al-Khilaf reports differences between Ben Asher and Ben Naftali with regard to the occurrence of phonetic gaʿya and the reading of shewa in forms of the type discussed in this section, e.g.159
Ben Asher: (L:
‘like a false divination’ Ezek. 21.28)
Ben Naftali:
333In some cases, manuscripts with compound Babylonian vocalization that represent the Tiberian reading tradition such as I Firk. Evr. I B 3 mark a vowel as short where L and A have a gaʿya, e.g.
L, A: [siːvaˈχeː] ‘the thickets of’ (I Firk. Evr. I B 3
[sivχeː] Isa. 10.34)
I.2.5.9. Marking of Shewa at the End of a Word
334The shewa sign marks a vowelless consonant in the coda of a syllable in the middle of a word, but a vowelless consonant at the end of a word is generally not marked by a shewa sign, e.g.
[baR̟eːˈ∫iːiθ] ‘in the beginning’ (Gen. 1.1)
[ʔƐloːˈhiːim] ‘God’ (Gen. 1.1)
[hɔːˈʔɔːR̟Ɛsˁ] (Gen. 1.1).
335In the following circumstances, however, a shewa sign occurs on the final consonant of a word.
I.2.5.9.1. In Word-final Consonantal Clusters
336When a word ends with a cluster of two vowelless consonants, both consonants are marked with a shewa sign, e.g.
L: [vaɟˈɟeːevk] ‘and he wept’ (Gen. 45.15)
L: [vaɟˈɟiːi∫b] ‘and he captured’ (Num. 21.1)
L: [vaɟˈɟeːe∫tʰ] ‘and he drank’ (Gen. 9.21)
L: [ˈjaːaftʰ] ‘may he enlarge’ (Gen. 9.27)
L: [vaɟˈɟiːiftʰ] ‘and [my heart] has been enticed’ (Job 31.27)
L: [viˈjeːeR̟d] ‘and may he have dominion’ (Psa. 72.8)
L: [ˈneːeR̟d] ‘nard’ (Cant. 4.14)
L: [ˈja: aR̟d] ‘he causes him to dominate’ (Isa. 41.2)
L: [ʔal-ˈtʰoːospʰ] ‘do not add’ (Prov. 30.6)
L: [vatˈtʰaːa∫̟q] ‘and she gave to drink’ (Gen. 21.19)
L: [vaɟˈɟaːa∫̟q] ‘and he watered’ (Gen. 29.10)
L: [ˈ̟qoːo∫tˁ] ‘truth’ (Prov. 22.21)
L: [ˈjeːe∫tˁ] ‘let [not your heart] turn aside’ (Prov. 7.25)
- 160 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.14.; short version, edi (...)
- 161 Cf. Chomsky (1952, 16–17).
337As can be seen, such word-final clusters have falling sonority, in that the first consonant is sonorant or fricative and the second an obstruent. The Tiberian Masoretic sources state that both shewas at the end of such words were silent.160 According to some western medieval sources, the final shewa was vocalic in such words when they were not in major pause.161
- 162 Shashar (1983, 22), Ofer (1989, 318; 1993, 113–14).
338In a number of manuscripts, including some of the earliest model codices, the shewa is marked on the final consonant in words of this structure only when it is a תפכדגב consonant with dagesh but is omitted in final qof or ṭet, e.g.162
(A, S, Gen. 29.10)
(Parma di Rossi 3214 [1278 C.E.], Prov. 7.25)
339This practice of omission of the shewa by some scribes is referred to in the Treatise on the Shewa, where all the examples cited have final ṭet or qof:
- 163 163(...)
It is the practice of some people (to mark shewa) under other letters at the end of words like
‘and he watered’ (Gen. 29.10, etc.),
‘let it not turn aside’ (Prov. 7.25), and like
‘to inform you of the truth’ (Prov. 22.21)… . All of these do not have a function and they are not necessary. They are only for embellishment so that the letters do not remain bare of pointing, and some people do not mark them.163
340In the following examples an original word-final cluster of a ḥet and a plosive dalet has been split by an epenthetic vowel:
L: [vaɟˈɟiːħad] ‘and he rejoiced’ (Exod. 18.9)
L: [ʔal-ˈjiːħad] ‘let it not rejoice’ (Job 3.6)
The dalet remains plosive, despite the preceding vowel, indicating that the ḥet must originally have been vowelless and the epenthetic vowel was inserted at a late period after the rule of fricativization of consonants following vowels had ceased to operate. The shewa is marked on the final dalet by analogy with the vocalization of words with clusters such as
etc. Segolate forms with a medial ḥet such as
‘together’ (2 Sam. 14.16),
‘fear’ (Job 4.14) and
‘bribe’ (Deut. 10.17), by contrast, have an epenthetic before the dalet that must have been inserted at an earlier period, when the
fricativization rule was still operating.
I.2.5.9.2. Before a Final ʾAlef in the Orthography
341When a consonant that closes a syllable at the end of a word is followed by an ʾalef that is not read as a consonant or vowel letter, a shewa sign is placed on this consonant, e.g.
L: [bagˈgaːaj] ‘in the valley’ (Deut. 4.46)
L: [ˈ∫ɔːɔv] ‘emptiness’ (Exod. 23.1)
L: [vaɟˈɟaːaR̟] ‘and he saw’ (Gen. 1.10)
L: [ħeːetˁ] ‘sin’ (Lev. 19.17)
The purpose of marking the shewa on the penultimate letter and omitting it on the final ʾalef was to ensure correct reading, alerting the reader to the fact that only the penultimate letter should be read. This contrasts with vocalizations such as in which the final letter was read.
342The common spelling of the name ‘Artaxerxes’ exhibits a word-final consonant cluster followed by an ʾalef that is not read:
L: [ʔaR̟tʰaħˈ∫aːastʰ] (Ezr. 8.1)
Here there is a difference between qere and ketiv, whereby the ketiv represents a reading with a final vowel, as attested in Ezr. 4.7: (Ezr. 4.7), and the qere is a reading without the final vowel, as attested in the qere note to the second occurrence of the name in Ezr. 4.7:
i.e. the correct orthography of the qere ends in תש , without final א . Throughout the rest of the book of Ezra the name is written
or
without a qere note, but the vocalization is still clearly intended to correspond to an orthography without a final ʾalef. The vocalization, therefore, corresponds to that of a word with a final cluster such as
This should be distinguished from vocalizations such as
in which the final ʾalef is considered part of the appropriate orthography of the word, although not pronounced. The shewa would, therefore, occur on a vowelless consonant in the middle of the orthographic word, which follows normal vocalization practice.
In Biblical Aramaic, a vocalization similar to that of is found before a final he that is not read in the word
‘you (ms)’ (Dan. 2.29). Here again, the vocalization corresponds to that of an orthography without a final vowel letter.
In L a shewa is marked on the word-final yod in ‘in the valley’ (A
Deut. 34.6) by analogy with the normal orthography with final ʾalef
I.2.5.9.3. Second Person Feminine Singular Pronominal Suffix
343When the tav of the 2fs verbal suffix follows a consonant with silent shewa and is pronounced as a stop, a shewa sign is marked under the suffix, e.g.
L: [vijoːˈlaːaðtʰ] ‘and you shall bear [a son]’ (Gen. 16.11)
L: [sˁɔːˈħɔːɔq̟tʰ] ‘you (fs) laughed’ (Gen. 18.15)
L: [vɔʔɔːˈmaːaR̟tʰ] ‘and you (fs) will say’ (Jud. 4.20)
L: [liq̟ˈq̟aːatˁtʰ] ‘you gleaned’ (Ruth 2.19)
L: [vɔhɔːˈlaːaχtʰ] ‘and you should go’ (Ruth 2.9)
- 164 For this argument see Ofer (1993, 115-117).
This is analogous to the marking of shewa on the final consonant in clusters in words such as and
(§I.2.5.9.1.) except that clusters ending in the tav of the 2fs suffix regularly occur in verbs ending in a strong consonant and they are not restricted to clusters with falling sonority, as shown by cases such as
It is possible that the practice of marking a shewa on a final consonant in all contexts originated in the 2fs plosive verbal suffix and the primary motivation for this was to distinguish it clearly from the 2ms verbal suffix
It was then extended to word-final root consonants with dagesh, probably first to tav in forms such as
and subsequently elsewhere, in forms such as
and
Finally, it was extended to other word-final consonants in clusters, as in
by analogy with forms such as
164
The form ‘and (you) will give birth to’ (Gen. 16.11) should be interpreted as a feminine singular participle (equivalent to
) and so the final tav is the feminine nominal inflection rather than a verbal suffix. In
‘dwelling in’ (Jer. 22.23) and
‘nested’ (Jer. 22.23), which are likewise participles, there is a difference between ketiv and qere, the final yod being the orthography of the ketiv but not read in the qere.
344When the 2fs suffix follows a vowel in a final weak verb, the tav is fricative and is not marked with shewa, e.g.
L: [ʕɔːˈsiːiθ] ‘you have done’ (Gen. 3.13)
L: [va∫ɔːˈθiːiθ] ‘and you should drink’ (Ruth 2.9)
L: [vasˁɔːˈmiːiθ] ‘and [when] you are thirsty’ (Ruth 2.9)
345Sporadically in L, however, a shewa is marked on a final fricative 2fs suffix in weak verbs, by analogy with the marking of the shewa on the suffix in strong verbs, e.g.
L: [hɔːˈjiːiθ] ‘you were’ (A
Jud. 11.35)
L: [vɔhɔːˈjiːiθ] ‘and you shall be’ (A
Isa. 62.3)
346This is found more regularly in some other early manuscripts, e.g.
- 165 Cf. Shashar (1983, 22).
S: [vɔːɔθ] ‘you have come’ (L:
Gen. 16.8)165
- 166 Cf. Yeivin (1968, 370).
II Firk. Evr. II B 94: [va∫ɔːˈθiːiθ] ‘and you will drink’ (L:
Ruth 2.9)166
- 167 For this manuscript and the correction work of Mishaʾel ben ʿUzziʾel see Penkower (1989). For the (...)
347In the early model manuscript codex known as C3, shewa signs that were originally marked on several cases of fricative tav were erased by Mishaʾel ben ʿUzziʾel, who corrected the manuscript in many places. This suggests that the marking of shewa on a fricative 2fs suffix was an earlier layer of tradition.167
348In manuscripts with Babylonian vocalization, the tav of the suffix after vowels in final-weak verbs is generally fricative, as in Tiberian, but there is an isolated case of it being marked with dagesh in an Old Babylonian (OB) manuscript (Yeivin 1985, 350). This reflects its pronunciation as a stop by analogy with the form of the suffix on strong verbs:
ֹ
[jɔːfiːtʰ] ‘you are beautiful’ (L [BHS]:
Cant. 7.7)
In verbs with final guttural radicals a late insertion of an epenthetic vowel has occurred before the final suffix leaving the tav a stop, similarly to the process we have seen above in the form (Exod. 18.9), e.g.
L: ַַ [jɔːˈðaːʕatʰ] ‘you (fs) know’ (1 Kings 2.15)
L: [jɔːˈʁaːʕatʰ] ‘you have laboured’ (Isa. 62.8)
L: [∫ɔːˈχaːħatʰ] ‘you have forgotten’ (Isa. 17.10)
L: [humˈlaːħatʰ] ‘you were [not] rubbed with salt’ (Ezek. 16.4)
The shewa sign is marked on the tav by analogy with verbs with a final strong radical, such as (Ruth 2.9), etc. The dagesh in the tav indicates that the consonant was a stop. It was an ungeminated stop and the dagesh was read as a dagesh lene. This is shown by Karaite transcriptions that mark geminated consonants with an Arabic shadda sign but omit the shadda on
consonants with dagesh lene, e.g.
[sɔːˈvɔːɔʕatʰ] (BL Or 2549 fol. 234r, 5 | L [BHS]:
Ezek. 16.29 ‘you were [not] satisfied’)
349It should be noted that in this manuscript the shewa is omitted on the tāʾ transcribing the tav.
- 168 In L the shewa is omitted in ָּאֹ֑ת (Ruth 3.9).
- 169 Some reference grammars, such as Bergsträsser (1918, 141), Bauer and Leander (1922, 219–20), erron (...)
The plosive tav and vocalization with shewa of the 2fs independent pronoun (in pause
e.g. Gen. 12.11)168 has, likewise, arisen be analogy with the form and vocalization of the 2fs suffix on strong verbs. As is the case with the dagesh in the suffixes, the dagesh in the independent pronoun
was read as dagesh lene and the tav was not geminated.169 The lack of gemination is shown by Karaite transcriptions that mark geminated consonants with Arabic shadda. In these manuscripts, the shadda sign is not marked on the tāʾ that transcribes the tav, e.g.
[baθ-ˈmiː ˈʔaːatʰ hagˈgiːðiː] (BL Or 2544, fol. 10r, 3 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 24.23 ‘tell whose daughter you are’)
The reading of with ungeminated tav is found also in modern oral reading traditions that distinguish between geminated and ungeminated consonants.
In the Karaite transcriptions, the shewa sign is sometimes omitted on the tāʾ that transcribes the tav of e.g.
[vaˈʔaːatʰ] (BL Or 2549 fol. 226r, 1 | L [BHS
Ezek. 16.7 ‘and you’)
[ˈʔaːatʰ] (BL Or 2549 fol. 238v, 2 | L [BHS]:
Ezek. 16.45 ‘you’)
A similar type of vocalization is found in the 2fs suffix conjugation of the verb ‘to give’, e.g.
L: ַ ‘you (fs) gave’ (Ezek. 16.36)
In contrast to the independent pronoun the final tav in this form was pronounced geminate, as demonstrated by Karaite transcriptions, e.g.
[nɔːˈθaːattʰ] (BL Or 2549 fol. 235r, 2 | L [BHS]:
Ezek. 16.36 ‘you (fs) gave’)
350This form, therefore, had a final consonant cluster.
I.2.5.9.4. Final Kaf
351A shewa sign is regularly written on a vowelless word-final kaf, e.g.
L: ‘and darkness’ (Gen. 1.2)
L: ‘and he blessed’ (Gen. 1.22)
L: ‘within’ (Gen. 2.9)
352This practice is likely to have originated as a means of clearly distinguishing the 2fs possessive suffix from the 2ms possessive suffix, both of which are written without a final vowel letter, e.g.
L: ‘your (fs) brother’ (2 Sam. 13.7)
L: ‘your (ms) brother’ (2 Sam. 2.22)
- 170 Cf. Ofer (1993).
353The marking of the shewa was then extended to all occurrences of final kaf. This explanation is found already in the Mikhlol of David Qimḥi (1160–?1235):170
- 171 David Qimḥi, Mikhlol (ed. Rittenberg, 1862, 139b), Chomsky (1952, 17):
But the kaf of the feminine pronoun, as in
‘your (fs) hand’,
‘your (fs) leg’,
‘your (fs) eye’,
‘your (fs) ear’, is pointed with shewa since there is a possibility of erring and reading qameṣ, although a soft letter (i.e. mater lectionis) is not written after it. Therefore, they always pointed the kaf that designated the feminine with shewa. In conformity with the way they customarily pointed this kaf they regularly pointed also a root letter kaf at the end of a word, as in
‘pouring’,
‘darkness’,
‘way’. The kaf in these are the like the resh of
and the lamed of
but they did not point the resh and the lamed whereas they pointed the kaf (with shewa).171
I.2.5.9.5. Further Cases in L
354In L there are two cases where a shewa sign is marked at the end of a word that is linked to the following word by maqqef and does not fall into any of the categories mentioned above:
L: ‘Hadadrimmon’ (A, C:
Zech. 12.11)
L: ‘in front of the people (?)’ (A:
2 Kings 15.10)
I.2.5.9.6. Non-Standard Tiberian Manuscripts
355Many manuscripts with Non-Standard Tiberian vocalization exhibit patterns of occurrence of shewa on word-final letters that can be regarded as further extensions of the principles of marking shewa.
356In some manuscripts with Non-Standard Tiberian vocalization, a shewa sign is marked regularly on the fricative tav of the 3fs verbal suffix, e.g.
(T-S A12.1, Blapp 2017, 80 | L [BHS]:
Ruth 2.12 ‘you have come’)
(T-S A12.1, Blapp 2017, 80 | L [BHS]:
Ruth 3.4 ‘and you will uncover’)
(T-S A12.1, Blapp 2017, 80 | L [BHS]:
Ruth 2.9 ‘and [when] you are thirsty’)
357The shewa is often written on a word-final guttural consonant that is preceded by a vowel, especially ḥet and ʿayin (§I.1.8., §I.1.16.), e.g.
(T-S A11.1, Blapp 2017, 48 | L [BHS]:
Job 39.14 ‘and she forgot’)
(Codex Reuchlinianus, Morag 1959, 233 | L [BHS]:
1 Kings 11.40 ‘and he fled’)
(T-S A13.18, Blapp 2017, 127 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 90.12 ‘teach! ’)
(Codex Reuchlinianus, Morag 1959, 233 | L [BHS]:
2 Sam. 22.7 ‘and he heard’)
(T-S A11.1, Blapp 2017, 47 | L [BHS]:
Job 39.17 ‘God’)
(Codex Reuchlinianus | L [BHS]:
Isa. 13.10 ‘ [does not] give light’)
358The purpose of the shewa here appears to be to ensure that the weak guttural letter was read and not slurred over. It marks explicitly that the letter closes a syllable, and is therefore consonantal.
359Similarly, shewa in Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts is often marked on final consonantal vav that is preceded by a vowel, to ensure that they are read as consonantal (§I.1.6.), e.g.
(T-S A13.18, Blapp 2017, 125 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 89.46 ‘on him’)
(Codex Reuchlinianus, Morag 1959, 219 | L [BHS]:
‘and his train’ Isa. 6.1)
360Some Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts occasionally mark shewa on other word-final consonants that are preceded by a vowel and not in clusters, e.g.
(JTS ENA 2640 f. 11, Díez Macho 1971, 293-4 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 10.18 ‘man’)
(JTS ENA 2640 f. 11, Díez Macho 1971, 293-4 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 11.4 ‘in the temple of’)
(JTS ENA 2118 f. 14, Murtonen 1961, 55 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 20.6 ‘Ashur’)
(T-S A13.20, Blapp 2017, 155 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 71.7 ‘like a sign’)
In a number of Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts of non-biblical texts vocalizers have marked shewa on all word-final consonants, e.g. in the liturgical text Maḥzor Vitry: (Eldar 1975, 194).
361In some Non-Standard Tiberian biblical manuscripts shewa is marked on word-final he and ʾalef that are matres lectionis and are not realized as consonants, e.g.
(T-S A13.20, Blapp 2017, 156 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 69.21 ‘has broken’)
(T-S A13.20, Blapp 2017, 156 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 70.6 ‘hasten’)
(T-S A13.20, Blapp 2017, 156 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 71.3 ‘to come’)
362It seems that this practice arose by extending the use of shewa that marks syllable closure to letters that are pronounced as vowels without consonantal realization. A similar development is attested in Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts in the use of mappiq on he and dagesh on ʾalef, which are in some cases extended from marking consonantal he and ʾalef to the marking also of matres lectionis he and ʾalef (§I.1.1., §I.1.5.). This type of extension of the marking of shewa is sometimes applied also to word-internal matres lectionis, e.g.
(T-S NS 18.5, Arrant 2020 | L [BHS]:
Num. 14.40 ‘we have sinned’)
(T-S A22.54, Khan 1991, 855 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 2.2 ‘his work’)
(T-S A22.54 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 3.2 ‘and she said’)
(T-S A12.1, Blapp 2017, 80 | L [BHS]:
Prov. 29.14 ‘the poor’)
(T-S AS 8.123, Arrant 2020 | L [BHS]:
Lev. 24.1 ‘saying’)
- 172 Eldar (1975, 195; 1978, 68–69), Bar-Asher (1980, 48).
- 173 Eldar (1978, 69), Beit-Arié (1965, 38).
Such a marking of shewa on word-internal matres lectionis has been identified in manuscripts of European provenance containing non-biblical Hebrew texts with a Non-Standard Tiberian type of vocalization, e.g. .172 In some European manuscripts, mater lectionis ʾalef is marked by ḥaṭef pataḥ instead of shewa, e.g.
173 This is unlikely to reflect a consonantal realization of the ʾalef but rather has arisen by analogy with the use on matres lectionis of the shewa sign, which alternates with ḥaṭef pataḥ in other contexts.
- 174 Eldar (1975, 195), Bar-Asher (1980, 48). These three types of double vocalization of vowels marked (...)
Another Non-Standard Tiberian vocalization practice found in non-biblical texts is to mark shewa on a consonant preceding a mater lectionis that is marked by a vowel sign. This is found before shureq, which is always marked on mater lectionis vav, e.g. in Mishnaic texts: (Sharvit 1968, 24), and also before other matres lectionis on which a vowel is marked contrary to the standard Tiberian system, e.g. כ ְּ א ַ ן (Bar-Asher 1980, 48). Alternatively, when the mater lectionis has a vowel sign, the preceding consonant is sometimes also marked with a vowel sign, e.g.
174
I.2.6. Syllabification and Metrical Structure of Word-final Syllables
The syllable structure of words with final consonantal clusters such as ‘and he wept’ (Gen. 45.15),
‘and he captured’ (Num. 21.1) and
‘you gleaned’ (Ruth 2.19) can be analysed as having extra-syllabic consonants. These would have the underlying structure /vaj.jev.k/, /vaj.ji∫.b/ and /li̟q.̟qatˁ.t/, in which the final consonant of the cluster at the periphery of the word is extrasyllabic. This can be compared to the analysis of the underlying syllable structure of a word such as
as /̟qō.l/ with an extrasyllabic final consonant (§I.2.4.). In both cases the extra-syllabicity of the final consonant is conditioned by the fact that a syllable should not have more than two morae. Words with final consonant clusters such as /vaj.jev.k/, /vaj.ji∫.b/ and /li̟q.̟qatˁ.t/ have in their final syllables a vowel without inherent length. On the phonetic level, however, the final vowel would be lengthened by stress and so it would split into a CV̄. VC structure with an epenthetic vowel after the long vowel, as is the case with /̟qō.l/ [ˈ̟qoːol] and /lev/ [ˈleːev], viz. [vaɟ.ˈɟeː.ev.k], [vaɟ.ˈɟiː.i∫.b] and [li̟q.ˈ̟qaːatˁ.t]. The consonant on the word-final periphery would remain extrasyllabic at the phonetic level.
363As is the case with words such as [ˈ̟qoːol] and [ˈleːev], on the level of metrical parsing the unstressed epenthetic in words such as [vaɟ.ˈɟeː.ev.k], [vaɟ.ˈɟiː.i∫.b] and [li̟q.ˈ̟qaːatˁ.t] would belong together with the preceding long vowel in a trochaic foot. The final consonant can be considered to have been extrametrical:
[vaɟ. | ˈɟeː.ev.k] |
(*) | (ˈ* .) |
- 175 Such underlying representations without the epenthetic vowel are adopted in analyses of Tiberian H (...)
Word-final extrasyllabic consonants can be posited to exist also in segolate forms, e.g. [ˈmƐː.lƐχ] ‘king’,
[ˈseː.fƐR̟] ‘book’,
[ˈ̟qoː.ðƐ∫] The underlying forms of these would be /mƐl.χ/, /sef.r/, /qoð.∫/, and the final extrasyllabic consonant would be syllabified by an epenthetic on the phonetic level.175 As is the case with other epenthetics, we should assume that these epenthetics did not stand in an independent foot. They would be analogous to the epenthetic of words such as [ˈ̟qoː.ol] and be weak syllables bound prosodically to the previous strong syllable in a trochaic foot:
/mƐl.χ/
[ˈmƐː.lƐχ]
(ˈ* .)
364The vowel in the underlying syllable structure /mɛl.χ/ is short. After the insertion of the epenthetic, it has become lengthened. A stressed vowel would have been lengthened. A further factor that brought about this lengthening is likely to have been a metrical constraint on having a sequence of a light CV syllable and a following weak epenthetic syllable.
A similar analysis would apply to forms such as ‘let it not rejoice’ (Job 3.6) and
‘you (fs) have forgotten’ (Isa. 17.10), which also end in trochaic feet:
/jiħ.d/ | /∫ɔːχaħ.t/ |
[ˈjiː.ħad] | [∫ɔːˈχaː.ħat] |
(ˈ* .) | (*) (ˈ* .) |
365Some nouns that derive historically from a *CVCC pattern have stress on the syllable containing the vowel that breaks the final cluster. This applies, for example, to nouns with a medial ʾalef, e.g.
366In such forms an original epenthetic takes the main stress. The original short lexical vowel is left without stress and comes to be in a metrically weak CV syllable, and so is represented by shewa. Since the second vowel is stressed it should be assumed that, although originally an epenthetic, it has become reanalysed as a lexical vowel in the underlying form of the word:
This process of shifting the stress to the epenthetic is regular with medial-ʾalef nouns, in which it may have been motivated by an effort to preserve the weak ʾalef. By making the ʾalef the onset of a strong stressed syllable of a foot, i.e. [beˈʔeːeR̟] (. ˈ* .) rather than of a weak unstressed syllable of a foot, as in
[ˈmƐː.lƐχ] (ˈ* .) the articulation of the ʾalef is strengthened. The same orthoepic metrical principle is likely to have given rise to the ṣere on initial ʾalef in forms such as
‘girdle’ and
‘crib’, which have a
and
morphological pattern respectively. The ʾalef with ṣere is a metrically strong syllable (*), whereas an ʾalef with ḥaṭef segol, which would have been expected according to the morphological pattern, would have been a metrically weak syllable. The same explanation holds for the vocalization of ʾalef with ṣere in verbal forms such as
‘you love’ (Prov. 1.22), where a ḥaṭef segol would be expected (cf.
Zech. 8.17). Note also the form
‘it consumes him’ (Job 20.26), where this process has preserved the ʾalef, which is normally weakened and after prefixes (cf.
Isa. 62.9 ‘they will eat it’).
367Stress shifts to the epenthetic syllables also in many nouns with a final weak radical, e.g.
368In such cases, the motivation for the stress shift appears to be that the long vowel created by the combination of the epenthetic and the final weak radical was favoured for stress placement over the short vowel in the first syllable.
Clusters of two consonants on the phonetic level occur in principle on word peripheries. This includes the word-final periphery, as in the forms discussed above, and the word-initial periphery, as in the isolated case of the numeral ‘two’ / in which the shewa is silent: [ˈ∫taːjim], [ˈ∫teː]. As with word-final clusters, the initial consonant of the word-initial cluster in this word can be analysed as extrasyllabic on the underling and phonetic level, viz. /∫.tē/ [∫.ˈteː] (§I.2.5.3.).
It has been shown (§I.2.5.6.) that the parsing of a form such as /̟qō.l/ [̟qoːol] with a long vowel followed by an extrasyllabic consonant, which is realized phonetically as a strong syllable followed by a light epenthetic syllable in a trochaic foot (* .), has been extended by analogy into word-internal position in cases where a long vowel is followed by silent shewa, e.g. /∫ɔ̄.m.rū/ [∫ɔː.ɔm.ˈR̟uː] (* .) (*).
There are a few cases of the extension of the syllabic structure and/or metrical pattern of underlying word-final consonantal clusters to word-internal position. One such case is that of forms with word-internal gutturals in a closed syllable such as [jaː.ʕam.ˈðuː] ‘they stand’. The metrical structure of this can be represented as follows:
[jaː.ʕam. | ˈðuː] |
(* .) | (*) |
369The word would consist of two feet, the first of which is trochaic. Evidence for this is the fact that the accent can be retracted to the vowel before the guttural by the process of nesiga (Revell 1983), e.g.
[ˈnaː.ʕam.ðɔː] ‘let us stand’ (Isa. 50.8)
The normal rule of nesiga is that the accent cannot be retracted further than the first syllable before the final syllable that has a full vowel sign, so long as this syllable has a long vowel. This means that the accent in a word such as ‘the cubit’ [hɔː.ʔam.mɔː] cannot be retracted to the initial syllable. We propose that the reason nesiga is possible in a form such as
[ˈnaː.ʕam.ðɔː] but not in a word such as
[hɔː.ʔam.mɔː] is that nesiga takes account of metrical feet rather than phonetic syllables. The rule is that the accent cannot be moved back further than the foot immediately preceding the word-final foot. These two words have different metrical structures,
has two feet, whereas
has three:
naː. | ʕam. | ðɔː |
(* | .) | (*) |
hɔː. | ʔam. | mɔː |
(*) | (*) | (*) |
Nesiga can take place in a word such as ‘it is far from me’ (Job 21.16) since it too consists of two feet:
[ˈR̟ɔː. | ħa.̟qɔː] |
ˈ (*) | (. *) |
The trochaic foot in a word such as [jaː.ʕam.ˈðuː] (* .) (*) is analogous to that of a segolate form such as
[ˈmƐː.lƐχ] (* .) ‘king’ or
[ˈnaːʕaR̟] (* .) ‘youth’, in which the final syllable is unstressed.
A form such as [jaː.ʕam.ˈðuː] can be assumed to have the underlying phonological form /jaʕmðū/, which would correspond to the syllable structure of the equivalent morphological form in strong verbs, e.g..
/ji∫mrū]. The process of derivation would be as follows:
/jaʕmðū/ > (i) [ja.ʕam.ðū] > (ii) [jaː.ʕam.ˈðuː]
In stage (i), an epenthetic is added after the guttural in the phonetic form and the guttural is syllabified in a closed syllable with the following consonant. In stage (ii), the vowel of the preceding syllable is lengthened due to a metrical constraint against having a sequence of a light CV syllable followed by weak unstressed epenthetic syllable. This would be similar to the proposed derivation of forms with gutturals such as viz. /heʕ.lū/ > (i) [hƐ.ʕƐ.ˈluː] > (ii) [hƐː.ʕƐ.ˈluː] (§I.2.5.4.).
Another case of a word-internal trochaic foot is in proper names such as [bƐːR̟Ɛχˈjɔːhuː] ‘Berechiah’ (1 Chron. 2.24). Here the syllabification and metrics of a word-final segolate pattern have been extended to word-internal position:
370In the Babylonian reading tradition, the vowel before the epenthetic has not been lengthened but rather reduced (Yeivin 1985, 1082):
[braχˈjɔːhuː]
This can be compared to the lack of lengthening in Babylonian pronunciation of the vowel before the epenthetic of gutturals in forms such as ‘young woman’, which was read as [nʕaˈrɔː] or [naʕaˈrɔː] (§I.2.5.4.).
One possible case of a word-internal syllable-final consonant cluster is reflected by the vocalization of the Hebrew gentilic ‘the Jerahmeelite’ in L. In most cases this is vocalized [haɟ.ɟa. R̟aħ.me.ʔeː.ˈliː]. In 1 Sam. 27.10, however, it is vocalized in L as follows:
L: (A:
1 Sam. 27.10)
This was also the original vocalization of the form in 1 Sam. 30.29, though it has been corrected to The vocalization
is found in 1 Sam. 27.10 and 1 Sam. 30.29 also in other manuscripts written by the scribe of L, Samuel ben Jacob, showing that it is unlikely to be a random error (Phillips 2017, 16). This vocalization, therefore, may be a case of a word-internal consonant cluster at the end of a syllable analogous to word-final clusters in words such as
‘nard’ (Cant. 4.14) and
‘he causes him to dominate’ (Isa. 41.2). As in the word-final clusters, the word-internal cluster in
would have falling sonority. The cluster would come before the boundary between the stem of the name and the theophoric element (cf. the remarks concerning the name Eliphelehu in §I.2.5.7.6.).
I.2.7. Lexical Ḥaṭef Vowels
371Some short vowels in open syllables are lexical vowels rather than epenthetic vowels. This applies mainly to a set of vowels represented by ḥaṭef qameṣ. In such cases, the ḥaṭef qameṣ [ɔ] preserves the rounded quality of a historical lexical vowel of the morphological form and there has not been quality reduction and neutralization. They should be represented as the phoneme /o/ with unspecified length in the phonological form of the word. In conformity with the normal rule, this phoneme is realized as [ɔ] in unstressed syllables, and [oː] in syllables with the main stress, e.g.
[ha̟q.̟qɔ.ðɔː.ˈ∫iː.im] /ha̟q.̟qo.ðɔ̄.∫ī.m/ (2 Kgs 12.19 ‘the holy things’) < *qoðɔ̄šīm; cf. sing.
[ˈ̟qoːðƐ∫])
[ħɔ. R̟ɔː.ˈvoː.oθ] /ħo.rɔ̄.vō.θ/ (Psa. 9.7 ‘waste places’) < *ḥurɔ̄vōƟ; cf. sing.
[ħɔR̟ˈbɔː] Lev. 26.31 ‘waste place’)
[ʔƐsˁ.sˁɔ.ˈR̟Ɛː.Ɛn.nɔː] /ʔƐsˁ.sˁo.rƐn.nɔ̄/ (Isa. 27.3 ‘I guard it’) < *ʾeṣorƐnnɔ̄; cf.
[ʔƐsˁˈsˁoːorˁ] (Psa. 119.69 ‘I keep’)
[ħɔ.ˈliː] /ħol.j/ (‘illness’) < *ḥuly; cf. pausal form
[ˈħoːliː] (Deut. 7.15)
[R̟ɔ.ˈʔiː] /roʔ.j/ (Gen. 16.13 ‘seeing’) < *ruʾy; cf. pausal form
[ˈR̟oːʔiː] (1 Sam. 16.12)
[sˁɔ.ˈR̟iː] /sˁor.j/ (‘balm’) < *ṣury; cf. pausal form
[vɔːˈsˁoːR̟iː] (Ezek. 27.17)
[dɔ.ˈmiː] /dom.j/ (‘silence’) < *dumy
[ħɔ.ˈR̟iː] /ħor.j/ (‘burning’) < *ḥury
372In the examples cited above the ḥaṭef qameṣ is the reflex of a short round historical vowel. In some cases ḥaṭef qameṣ in an open syllable is the result of the shortening of an original [oː] /ō/ or [ɔː] /ɔ̄/ in an unstressed syllable, e.g.
[sˁip.pʰɔ.ˈR̟iː.im] /sˁip.pʰo.rī.m/ (Lev. 14.49 ‘birds’) < *ṣippōrīm; cf. sing.
[sˁippʰoːoR̟])
[kʰut.tʰɔ.ˈnoː.oθ] /kʰut.tʰo.nō.θ/ (Exod. 29.8 ‘tunics’) < *kuttōnōƟ; cf. sing.
[kʰutˈtʰoːnƐθ]
[ˈbɔː.mɔ.θeː] /bɔ̄.mo.θē/ (Isa. 14.14 ‘the heights of’) < *ˈbɔ̄mōƟē; cf.
[bɔːˈmoːoθ] ‘heights’
[hƐː.ħɔ.ˈðaː.al.tʰiː] /hƐƐ.ħo.ðal.tʰī/ (Jud. 9.9. ‘shall I cease?’) < *ḥɔ̄ˈðāltī
373There are some cases where the qere has a lexical ḥaṭef qameṣ where the ketiv has a mater lectionis vav, e.g.
Neh. 13.23: ketiv
qere
‘Ashdodite, Ammonite (women)’
374The ketiv, in such cases, would seem to reflect a variant reading in which a historical long /ō/ had not been shortened.
Some words with ḥaṭef qameṣ in an open syllable exhibit variants in which the reduction to an epenthetic has taken place. This is seen, for example, in the vocalization ‘the holinesses’ (Ezek. 44.13) instead of the more common
Compare also
(Psa. 119.33 ‘and I will keep it’) to
(Isa. 27.3 ‘I guard it’), and
‘branches of’ (Zech. 4.12), which seems to be the same lexical item as
‘ears of grain’ (Gen. 41.5). In some cases, the variants are differences between Masoretic authorities. Mishaʾel ben ʿUzziʾel, for example, in his Kitāb al-Khilaf records a variation between the reading of Ben Asher
‘I will write it’ (Jer. 31.33) and that of Ben Naftali
(Lipschütz 1965,
).
Yeivin (1980, 283) identifies some cases of ḥaṭef segol on non-guttural consonants as a lexical vowels (‘morphological use’ in his terminology). These are found mainly in Biblical Aramaic, e.g. (Dan. 4.27 ‘I built it’),
(Ezra 4.18 ‘it was read’),
(Dan. 2.30 ‘it was revealed’). A Hebrew example is ּ
(A, C 2 Sam. 6.5 ‘and with cymbals’). L has simple segol here:
It is not clear, however, whether any of these preserve the original quality of a lexical vowel or whether they reflect some kind of assimilation to the phonetic environment.
- 176 For example, Delattre and Hohenberg (2009).
375The qualities of ḥaṭef qameṣ [ɔ] and ḥaṭef segol [Ɛ] share the property of being lax vowels, in that they were produced in the central vowel space. Phonetic studies of other languages have shown that, all other things being equal, unstressed lax vowels are shorter than unstressed tense vowels.176 This feature of the lax vowels [ɔ] and [Ɛ] could have been the principal reason why the retention of their qualities was allowed in conditions where tense vowel qualities were reduced.
- 177 Yeivin (1968, 35), Shashar (1983, 21).
In some manuscripts, a shewa sign is marked where L has a lexical vowel represented by ḥaṭef qameṣ. In MS Sassoon 507 (S), for example, the plural form is vocalized
177 The treatise Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, §19) states that some scribes wrote shewa rather than ḥaṭef qameṣ in the words
and
where the ḥaṭef qameṣ represented a lexical vowel. The following passage from Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ also refers to the practice of some scribes to mark short lexical vowels in open syllables with shewa rather than a ḥaṭef sign:
- 178 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.6.
It is said … that some scribes wanted to remove uncertainty from places that may lead to error and have combined a vowel with shewa… because they thought that people would err in the reading of (for example)
When some people saw shewa without qameṣ in
they read it as pataḥ. If they saw qameṣ alone, they were at risk of giving the qameṣ its full length. So, the scribes decided to combine them so that this degree of uncertainty be removed. This applied also to similar cases. This is an exception to their customary practice. What supports the claim that this is the view of only some of them with regard to letters not belonging to the group of the four (guttural letters) is that in most codices one does not find what has been presented as counterevidence (i.e. the marking of ḥaṭef signs on non-guttural letters), but all codices are uniform in the combination of shewa with a vowel under the four (guttural) letters.178
These variations in vocalization whereby the shewa sign is written instead of ḥaṭef qameṣ representing lexical vowels in words such as and
are variations in notation of the lexical vowel rather than its reduction to an epenthetic.
The form [R̟ɔ.ˈʔiː] (Gen. 16.13 ‘seeing’) indicates that a ḥaṭef qameṣ that represents a lexical vowel does not assimilate to the quality of the vowel after a following guttural, unlike epenthetic vowels.
- 179 See the commentary on Sefer Yeṣira by Saadya Gaon (ed. Lambert 1891, 79) and the sources cited in (...)
The status of these lexical vowels represented by ḥaṭef qameṣ involved not only the resistance to neutralization of their historical vowel quality and to assimilation to the quality of adjacent vowels but also retention of a stronger metrical structure than epenthetics. This is demonstrated by the distribution of the allophones of resh. In the medieval sources, the resh was said to have its default uvular realization in a word such as [sˁɔ.ˈR̟iː] ‘balm’ (Gen. 43.11),179 i.e., after an alveolar consonant with ḥaṭef qameṣ. As remarked in §I.1.20., when the alveolar has vocalic shewa in this environment, as in the word
[sˁɑ.rˁuː.ˈfɔː] ‘refined (fs)’ (2 Sam. 22.31), the resh was in the same foot as the alveolar and had a pharyngealized apico-alveolar realization. This reflects the fact that the domain of the conditioning of the allophones of resh was the foot rather than the syllable:
[(sˁɑ.rˁuː.) | (ˈfɔː)] |
(. *) | (ˈ*) |
The realization of the resh in [sˁɔ.ˈR̟iː] as an uvular can be interpreted as reflecting the fact that such a ḥaṭef qameṣ on a non-guttural consonant was in a separate foot from that of the following syllable:
[(sˁɔ.) | (ˈR̟iː)] |
(*) | (ˈ*) |
376The foot containing the ḥaṭef qameṣ consists of light monomoraic syllable CV. Metrical phonologists term this a ‘degenerate foot’, since feet would normally be expected to be bisyllabic or bimoraic (Prince 1990; Kager 2007, 200–201). Such degenerate feet are tolerated in some languages, but often only under certain conditions, such as peripheral position or main stress. In Tiberian Hebrew, a degenerate foot consisting of a light CV syllable is only tolerated with a lax vowel quality of qameṣ or segol. Furthermore, it is only allowed if it is immediately followed by a stronger bimoraic syllable (CVV or CVC). This is analogous to the fact that a light epenthetic CV syllable, represented by a shewa or a ḥaṭef vowel, is only allowed if it is bound prosodically with a following bimoraic syllable in the same foot. This can be captured by proposing metrical tree structures such as the following:
Key: w = weak, s = strong, ϕ = foot
377These trees show that CV syllables with lexical vowels have at a higher metrical level the same rhythmic relationship with what follows as does a CV epenthetic vowel within a foot. The bimoraic syllable following a lexical vowel is stronger than the lexical vowel on a higher metrical level, just as a bimoraic syllable is stronger than a preceding epenthetic CV within a foot.
378A series of two light CV syllables is not tolerated, and a foot with the syllabic structure CVCV is not licit. So a degenerate CV foot cannot be combined with a preceding monomoraic syllable of a vocalic shewa of a preposition or a short /u/ of the conjunctive vav. In such cases the ḥaṭef qameṣ vowel is elided and in this respect it behaves like a vocalic shewa, e.g.
[bið.ˈmiː] (Isa. 38.10 ‘in the silence of’ versus
(Isa. 62.6)
[wusˁ.ˈrˁiː] (Gen. 37.25 ‘and balm’) versus
(Gen. 43.11)
379Another repair strategy is to lengthen a preceding short vowel, as is found when the degenerate foot is preceded by interrogative he, e.g.
[haː.sˁɔ.ˈR̟iː] ‘is there no balm in Gilead?’ (Jer. 8.22)
Another way in which syllables with lexical vowels behave like vocalic shewa is in the retraction of the accent (nesiga). It was established in §I.2.6. that nesiga operates within the domain of metrical feet rather than syllables and the general rule is that it retracts not further than the foot that immediately precedes the word-final foot. In a construction such as ‘the heights of the clouds’ (Isa. 14.14) with a CV syllable containing a lexical ḥaṭef qameṣ vowel, the foot of this syllable is ignored and the stress retracts back to a syllable that is the third foot from the end:
[ˈbɔː | mɔ | θeː] |
ˈ (*) | (*) | (*) |
It would seem, therefore, that a degenerate foot containing a short CV syllable with a lexical short vowel was ignored by nesiga and so such a syllable behaves like the syllable of an epenthetic vowel that does not have its own foot, as in ‘it is far from me’ (Job 21.16):
[ˈR̟ɔː | ħa.̟qɔː] |
ˈ (*) | (. *) |
Nevertheless, there is evidence that such ḥaṭef qameṣ and ḥaṭef segol lexical vowels where metrically stronger than vocalic shewa due to their being parsed in a separate foot. Some reflections of the higher degree of metrical strength of a ḥaṭef qameṣ on non-guttural consonants in words like include the following.
380These short [ɔ] vowels represented by ḥaṭef qameṣ can receive a secondary stress, in which case they are lengthened and are represented by a simple qameṣ sign in the vocalization, e.g.,
(Exod. 29.37 ‘holinesses’)
[ˌ̟qɔː.ðɔː.ˈ∫iː.im]
ˌ (*) (*) ˈ (* .)
381Such secondary stress, marked in this case by a major gaʿya, occurs, in principle, two syllables back from the main stress at the end of the word (§I.2.8.2.1.). Secondary stress does not occur in words with vocalic shewa in this position, since the vowel is epenthetic and is metrically weak, e.g.
‘words’
[da.vɔː.ˈR̟iː.im]
(. *) ˈ (* .)
382In some early Tiberian Masoretic manuscripts, moreover, qameṣ is written in place of ḥaṭef qameṣ also in pretonic syllables that do not take secondary stress, e.g.,
II Firkovitch Evr. II B 10: ‘balm’ (Gen. 43.11, most manuscripts have
)
L: ‘he will strike him’ (1 Sam. 26.10, A and most manuscripts have
)
383The same applies to cases of ḥaṭef segol that sporadically occur under non-guttural consonants, e.g.,
L: ‘and with cymbals’ (2 Sam. 6.5, most manuscripts have
)
I.2.8. Variation in the Duration of Long Vowels
I.2.8.1. Syllables with the Main Stress and Unstressed Syllables
384According to the general principles of vowel length (§I.2.2.), vowels represented by basic vowel signs are long when they are either (i) in a stressed syllable or (ii) in an unstressed open syllable. There was, however, some variation in the relative duration of such long vowels. Some details of this variation can be reconstructed from the medieval sources.
I.2.8.1.1. Stressed and Unstressed Vowels
385We learn from some sources that vowels in stressed syllables were longer than long vowels in unstressed syllables. This was most clearly formulated in the grammatical treatises of the Qimḥi family, e.g. Joseph Qimḥi, Sefer Zikkaron:
- 180 Bacher (ed.) (1888, 17): The Qimḥis classified the Hebrew vowels into ‘big’ vowels and ‘small’ vo (...)
The big vowels are always long unless the stress is adjacent to them [i.e. they are in an unstressed syllable], e.g.
: the stress is on the mem, so you do not lengthen the qameṣ of the shin.180
386David Qimḥi, Sefer Mikhlol:
- 181 Ed. Rittenberg (1862, 137b–138a):
If adjacent to the ‘big’ vowel there is another vowel, either ‘small’ or ‘big’, and the stress falls on the letter next to it, you shorten the first vowel even though it is ‘big’, e.g.
‘I remember for you’ (Jer. 2.2): here the stress is on the kaf and you lengthen the stressed vowel despite the fact that it is ‘small’ Just as you lengthen this vowel, so you shorten the vowel of the zayin, although this is qameṣ.181
- 182 E.g. Saadya’s commentary on Sefer Yeṣira (ed. Lambert 1891, 76–77).
387Given that the Karaite transcriptions and other medieval sources182 clearly indicate that vowels in unstressed open syllables were long, these statements by the Qimḥis were probably not intended to mean that the unstressed long vowels were reduced completely to short ones but rather that these were still long relative to the short vowels although they were not as long as vowels that were lengthened by stress. This relative quantity difference between stressed and unstressed long vowels can also be inferred from other grammatical works, e.g. the epitome of Saadya’s grammatical work known as Kitāb Naḥw al-ʿIbrānī ‘The Book of the Grammar of Hebrew’, which was published by Eldar (1981, 128):
This tendency to reduce the duration of the long vowel in unstressed syllables may explain the occurrence of ḥaṭef qameṣ in place of the expected qameṣ in the form [hƐːħɔðaːaltiː] ‘shall I cease?’ (Jud. 9.9) or in place of the expected ḥolem in
[ˈbɔːmɔθeː] ‘the heights of’ (Isa. 14.14) (cf. §I.2.7.). It is likely that orthoepic efforts were made to keep the relatively weak unstressed open syllables long and cases such as
and
reflect lapses in this orthoepy.
388In the Karaite transcriptions, an unstressed ḥolem within words is sometimes represented without a mater lectionis, reflecting its shortening. This applies to the following example, in which a ḥolem occurs in an unstressed syllable before the secondary stress:
(BL Or 2543 MS A, fol. 7r, 8 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 25.34 ‘and your dispersions’)
389In less careful reading, the duration of these unstressed long vowels was regularly reduced. This is reflected, for example, by a Karaite transcription of the Psalms (Khan 1990a, Genizah MS 13), in which long qameṣ in unstressed open syllables is not transcribed by an Arabic mater lectionis, e.g.
(Genizah MS 13, Khan 1990a, 13 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 109.6 ‘against him’)
(Genizah MS 13, Khan 1990a, 13 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 111.9 ‘he sent’).
390In this manuscript and also in other Karaite transcriptions a long vowel in a closed syllable in an unstressed word bound by maqqef to what follows is, likewise, sometimes transcribed without a mater lectionis, e.g.
(Genizah MS 13, Khan 1990a, 13 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 111.3 ‘majesty’)
(Genizah MS 13, Khan 1990a, 13 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 112.3 ‘wealth’)
(BL Or 2546, fol. 118v, 5 | L [BHS]:
Num. 34.11 ‘sea of Chinnereth’)
(BL Or 2540, fol. 20v, 7 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 7.22 ‘the heart of Pharaoh’)
(BL Or 2540, fol. 17r, 2 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 6.14 ‘the house of their fathers’)
As has been remarked in §I.2.7., in some manuscripts words that normally have ḥaṭef qameṣ in a pre-stress syllable are vocalized with qameṣ, such as II Firkovitch Evr. II B 10: ‘balm’ (Gen. 43.11, most manuscripts have
), L:
‘he will strike him’ (1 Sam. 26.10, A and most manuscripts have
). This could reflect the application of this orthoepic measure to these vowels also, which resulted in their being lengthened. Moreover, in some medieval manuscripts with Non-Standard Tiberian vocalization this orthoepic tendency is reflected by the frequent marking of gaʿya on the pre-stress unstressed syllable, e.g. Vatican MS Urbinati 2 (Yeivin 1980, 250–51), e.g.
(L [BHS]:
Ezek. 1.1 ‘in the thirtieth [year]’)
(L [BHS]:
Ezek. 1.3 ‘it was’)
I.2.8.1.2. Deḥiq
- 184 Phonetic studies of other languages have shown that, all other things being equal, unstressed lax (...)
- 185 For further details concerning deḥiq see Yeivin (1980, 292–93).
391In the Masoretic literature it is reported that a long vowel in word-final position is shortened by the phenomenon known as deḥiq (Aramaic: ‘compressed’). The long vowel in question is usually qameṣ [ɔː] or segol [Ɛː], which are lax, rather than the tense long vowels shureq [uː], ḥolem [oː] and ḥireq [iː].184 The compression takes place typically when (i) the final lax vowels qameṣ and segol occur in a word that has the stress on the penultimate syllable and is read with a conjunctive accent or when the word has maqqef and (ii) the following word has stress on its initial syllable, or at least on a full vowel after an initial shewa, i.e. on the initial metrical foot. On account of the conjunctive accent or the maqqef, the first word is closely bound prosodically with the following word. When a vowel is in deḥiq, the consonant at the beginning of the following word has dagesh,185 e.g.,
L: ‘I shall cause to witness against them’ (Deut. 31.28)
L: ‘ (you breached) for yourself a breach’ (Gen. 38.29)
L: ‘to the land of Canaan’ (Gen. 12.5)
L: ‘who are these to you?’ (Gen. 33.5)
L: ‘in good pasture’ (Ezek. 34.14)
L: ‘will be in it’ (Josh. 2.19)
L: ‘you make for yourself’ (Prov. 24.6)
According to Hidāyat al-Qārīʾ, the final vowel here ‘is not dwelt upon or prolonged in pronunciation, ’186 ‘it does not have an exhalation of breath but is very compressed.’187 In an anonymous Masoretic treatise, the syllable containing a vowel in deḥiq is described as ‘shortened’ (makhṭūf).188 The vowel can be represented, therefore, as half-long, e.g. [vɔʔɔːˈʕiːðɔˑ ˈbbɔːɔm].
- 189 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.1.7.5.
392When the first word is connected by maqqef without an accent, Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ refers to the construction as ʾathe me-raḥiq (Aramaic: ‘coming from far’).189 This is because the conjunctive accent before the deḥiq is further away, on the second word before the main accent, e.g.
L: ‘He will build a house for my name’ (2 Sam. 7.13)
L: ‘Do you work wonders for the dead?’ (Psa. 88.11)
L: ‘Turn aside, sit here’ (Ruth 4.1)
393Some cases that are identified as ʾathe me-raḥiq have a disjunctive on the second word before the main accent, e.g.
L: ‘that I may go to her and inquire of her’ (1 Sam. 28.7)
- 190 E.g. the treatise published by Baer and Strack (1879, §29). See the remarks of Dotan (1969).
394This suggests that the main conditioning factor for the compression of the vowel is not the preceding accent but rather the status of the word with maqqef as prosodically subordinate to the following word. So these types of cases reflect the same basic phenomenon as cases of deḥiq where the word with the main accent is preceded by a word with a conjunctive accent. Some Masoretic treatises, indeed, use the term ʾathe me-raḥiq to refer to all cases of deḥiq.190
395When unstressed tense vowels, such as the high vowels shureq and ḥireq, occur at the end of a word in the configurations for deḥiq that have just been described, the vowel is generally not compressed and there is no dagesh on the following word, e.g.
L: [hoːR̟aðˈtʰeːnuː ˈvoː] ‘through which you let us down’ (Josh. 2.18)
L: [vɔːˈħaːaR̟tʰiː ˈvoː] ‘I have chosen him’ (1 Chron. 28.6)
396In such cases where the first word ends in a tense vowel, a gaʿya is sporadically marked on this vowel in early manuscripts, alerting the reading to the fact that the vowel should be given its full length and should not undergo compression through deḥiq, e.g.
L: ‘wail, oh gate’ (Isa. 14.31)
397This gaʿya is most commonly marked when the second word begins with a guttural consonant and cannot take a dagesh. In such cases, compression of the final vowel does not occur whatever its quality, e.g.
L: ‘these servants of yours’ (2 Kings 1.13)
A: ‘you did a kindness’ (1 Sam. 15.16)
A: ‘I saw yesterday’ (2 Kings 9.26)
L: ‘the people hide’ (Lev. 20.4)
- 191 For details of the occurrence of the gaʿya after the stress see Yeivin (1968, 188–91).
398It is also marked on lax vowels before non-guttural consonants that do not take an expected dagesh in conditions suitable for deḥiq, e.g.191
L: ‘and he keeps the Passover’ (Num. 9.14)
A: ‘death has come up’ (Jer. 9.20)
- 192 A parallel to such a process of compensatory gemination of a word-initial consonant is the so-call (...)
The dagesh that occurs on the first letter of the second word in deḥiq constructions, such as marked the gemination of the consonant. This is likely to have been a strategy to mark clearly a boundary between the two words, which was in danger of being lost due to the shortening of the vowel (§I.3.1.9.). A short vowel was not licit in word-final position. The gemination of the consonant was a repair strategy that compensated for the loss of duration in the preceding vowel and closed the word-final syllable. This was a fortition of the onset of the syllable in the second word. This fortition, it seems, was facilitated by the fact that the syllable was strong due to the incidence on it of the main stress:192
[vɔ.ʔɔː.ˈʕiː.ðɔˑ b.ˈbɔː.ɔm]
Such a process applied also to constructions in which the interrogative word is joined to the following word by maqqef such as the following:
L: ‘what is this?’ (Exod. 13.14)
L: ‘what will you give me?’ (Gen. 15.2)
The fact that the vowel in the interrogative word in such constructions is pataḥ can be interpreted as reflecting a complete shortening of the vowel at an early period. The long Tiberian qameṣ vowel /ɔ̄/ developed historically from a long */ā/. A short */a/, on the other hand, retained its non-rounded quality of /a/ in the Tiberian tradition. The pataḥ quality in the interrogative word reflects the shortening of */ā/ to */a/ at a period before */ā/ shifted to /ɔ̄/. The fact that deḥiq constructions such as have qameṣ in the final syllable of the first word rather than pataḥ either reflects a later date of the shortening, after */ā/ had shifted quality to /ɔ̄/, or reflects a process whereby the long vowel did not reduce completely to a short vowel and remained sufficiently long to undergo the quality shift.
399The Karaite Arabic transcriptions, most of which indicate long vowels by Arabic matres lectionis, represent the final qameṣ and segol in deḥiq constructions, with a mater lectionis, e.g.
(BL Or 2551 fol. 41r, 8 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 81.9 ‘I shall testify for you’)
(BL Or 2549 fol. 145r, 1 | L [BHS]:
Ezek. 4.2 ‘and set up against it the battering rams’)
(BL Or 2549 fol. 64r, 1 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 8.14 ‘and let us be silent there’)
400These show that in the Tiberian reading tradition, which is what most of the transcriptions reflect, the final vowel was not fully reduced to a short vowel. This is likely to have been an orthoepic measure to prevent complete shortening.
- 193 Data supplied by Shai Heijmans.
401The Babylonian tradition exhibits a lesser tendency than the Tiberian tradition for such an orthoepic measure. In many manuscripts with compound Babylonian vocalization, the vowel at the end of the first word in a deḥiq construction is marked with a ḥiṭfa sign, which indicates that it was pronounced as a short vowel (Yeivin 1985, 338), e.g.193
[hi∫∫ɔːvʔɔ lliː] ‘swear to me’ (Gen. 21.23 | L [BHS]:
)
[gaˈrtʰɔ bbɔː] ‘ [the land] where you have sojourned’ (Gen. 21.23 | L [BHS]:
)
[bmarʕa ttˁoːv] ‘in good pasture’ (Ezek. 34.14 | L [BHS]:
).
[tihya bboː] ‘will be in it’ (Josh. 2.19 | L [BHS]:
)
- 194 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
402Greek transcriptions also reflect a full shortening of the vowel. This is seen in the transcription of the vowel corresponding to Tiberian qameṣ with epsilon in the following example:194
ωσειεννα (Klostermann 1933, Heikel 1913, Gaisford 1842) | L [BHS]:
Psa. 118.25 ‘save, I pray! ’)
403Likewise, in modern reading traditions the vowel in deḥiq constructions is read as short, e.g.
404Baghdad
waʾəqbeˈreːhašˈšam (Morag 1977, 37 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 48.7 ‘and I buried her there’)
405Aleppo
neːlxašˈšam (Katz 1981, 30 | L [BHS]:
1 Sam. 9.6 ‘let us go there’)
- 195 Constructions with (...)
The Karaite transcriptions show that also the pataḥ of the interrogative word in constructions such as
(Exod. 13.14) was pronounced long. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ refers to the compression of this long vowel (see below), so it can be represented as half-long, like other long vowels compressed in deḥiq,195 e.g.
[maˑ ˈllɔːɔχ] (BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 64r, 7 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 21.17 ‘What is to you (fs)?’)
[maˑ ttʰittʰƐn ˈliː] (BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 57v, 8 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 15.2 ‘What will you (ms) give to me?’)
[maˑ ∫∫aˈmoː] (BL Or 2540, fol. 9r, 7 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 3.13 ‘What is his name?’)
[maˑ ˈzzoːoθ] (BL Or 2542, fol. 60v, 11 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 13.14 ‘What is this?’).
406In this light, we can understand the qere note in Exod. 4.2:
L:
407This was pronounced [maˑ-ˈzzƐː] in the reading tradition, as shown by the Karaite transcriptions, e.g.
(BL Or 2540, fol. 10v, 3 | L [BHS]: qere
ketiv
Exod. 4.2 ‘What is this?’)
The qere note indicates that the appropriate orthography for the reading [maː-ˈzzƐː] is not
There are some Karaite transcriptions that reflect a less careful reading tradition and represent the pataḥ in as short, e.g.
(Genizah MS 13, Khan 1990a, 156 | L [BHS]:
‘How precious! ’ Psa. 36.8)
(Genizah MS 13, Khan 1990a, 156 | L [BHS]:
‘What ails you?’ Psa. 114.5)
408Manuscripts with compound Babylonian vocalization indicate that the pataḥ continued to be pronounced short in the Babylonian tradition (Yeivin 1985, 338–39):
[ma ˈzzoːθ] ‘What is it?’ (Exod. 13.14 | L [BHS]:
)
[ma jjeːʕɔːˈsaː] ‘What will be done?’ (Exod. 2.4 | L [BHS]:
)
- 196 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
409Furthermore, there is an extant Greek transcript in Origen’s Hexapla that represents the vowel corresponding to the Tiberian pataḥ with epsilon, indicating that it was read short:196
μεββεσε` (Ambrosiana palimpsest | L [BHS]:
Psa. 30.10 ‘what profit?’)
The lengthening of the pataḥ in appears, therefore, to be an orthoepic measure in some core streams of the Tiberian tradition to keep the written word prosodically separate from the following word.
Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ classifies constructions with followed by dagesh as deḥiq:
- 197 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.1.7.4.
The compression [of a long vowel] may occur in a word that does not have an accent but is a small word, as in
‘whatever (your soul) says’ (1 Sam. 20.4),
‘This is my son’ (1 Kings 3.23),
‘What, my son?’ (Prov. 31.2).197
According to Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, therefore, the pataḥ in ( 1 Sam. 20.4) and the qameṣ in
(Deut. 31.28) in the Tiberian tradition are both long vowels that have undergone compression. The status of the pataḥ in מ ַ ה as a long vowel must have been the result of later orthoepic lengthening, since the presence of the pataḥ clearly shows that it had undergone shortening at some earlier period. Likewise, despite the compression described in the Hidāya of other vowels in deḥiq, efforts were made in the Tiberian tradition to retain their length, to keep them clearly separate from what follows. In traditions that had less concern for orthoepy, such as the Babylonian tradition, the vowels were read as short in both contexts.
- 198 For more details concerning the minor gaʿya see Yeivin (1980, 244– 245).
When constructions with מ ַ ה have the configuration that is optimal for minor gaʿya, the pataḥ is marked with minor gaʿya and is lengthened by this musical gaʿya rather than by orthoepic lengthening. These constructions have disjunctive accents and the pataḥ in the מ ַ ה in the closed syllable is separated from the stressed syllable either (i) by another closed syllable, followed by vocal shewa or (ii) by an open syllable followed by a ḥaṭef with an identical quality (i.e. patterns that may be represented thus: and
), e.g.198
L: ‘What we will serve?’ (Exod. 10.26)
L: ‘and what will you do?’ (Josh. 7.9)
Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ includes the last example (Josh. 7.9) in the section on deḥiq indicating that the pataḥ vowel was compressed. It can be represented, therefore, [umaˑ-ttaːʕaˈseː] with half-long [aˑ]. This would be compatible with minor gaʿya, which results in only half-lengthening of the vowel it falls on (§I.2.8.2.2.). Karaite transcriptions transcribe the pataḥ in these circumstances with a mater lectionis, e.g.
(BL Or 2542, fol. 56v, 10 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 10.26 ‘What we will serve’)
I.2.8.1.3. The Impact of Musical Accents on Duration
- 199 The practice of speakers of a language to lengthen the final word in a syntactic phrase has been d (...)
- 200 Cf. the words of the thirteenth-century naqdan Yequtiʾel bar Yehudah: ‘There is no lengthening on (...)
- 201 The occurrence of qameṣ in place of pataḥ in pausal forms such as in (...)
410The duration of a given stressed vowel relative to another stressed vowel clearly varied according to the musical accent it carried. It may be assumed that words with disjunctive accents, which marked a syntactic boundary, were chanted at a slower tempo than words with conjunctives. This is reflected by several phenomena connected with the occurrence of the secondary stress that will be discussed in §I.2.8.2.199 Stressed vowels with disjunctives were, therefore, generally longer than those with conjunctives.200 Moreover, the phenomenon of pausal forms suggests that the lengthening of stressed syllables of words occurring at a major syntactic division has deep historical roots in the reading tradition.201
- 202 Cf. Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, 106): (...)
- 203 The early sources divided the accents into three groups according to the nature of their tone, two (...)
- 204 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version (ed. Eldar 2018, 86–87): (...)
The duration of a vowel also varied according to the musical motif of each accent. There are a number of allusions to differences in the length of the various accents in the Masoretic sources. Merkha, as its name suggests, is said to be a relatively long accent.202 According to Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, the low, sustained accents,203 viz. pashṭa, zaqef, ṭifḥa, ʾatnaḥ and silluq, were lengthened with a concomitant modulation (hazz) and rise in tone (rafʿ) if the syllable upon which they fell was followed by another syllable, e.g. ‘heaven’ (Gen. 1.1),
‘the earth’ (Gen. 1.1). If, however, they fell on the final syllable of a word, they were chanted quickly without a modulation or rise in tone.204 Durational differences of the stressed vowel were doubtless occasioned also by the musical structure of the other accents, but these cannot be established from the sources with any certainty.
411The conjunctive accent preceding the disjunctive accent pashṭa is merkha when the two stressed syllables are not separated by another syllable (Yeivin 1980, 196), e.g.
L: ‘creating light’ (Isa. 45.7)
L: ‘was without form’ (Gen. 1.2)
412Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ states with regard to such combinations:
- 206 For similar terminology in the surviving sections of Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ see Eldar (2018, 85-88).
413The reduction in the duration of the vowel with merkha was evidently correlated with the increased length of the vowel with pashṭa and the concomitant rise in tone. We learn from the descriptions of the three different categories of tone in the orthoepic treatises that the high tones had a greater intensity (magnitude of sound) than the low tones. This is clearly expressed in the following passage from the Arabic Maḥberet ha-Tījān. The two high tones are termed ʾiʿlān (‘announcing’) and rafʿ (‘raising’) and the low tone waḍʿ (‘laying down’):206
- 207 Ed. Neubauer (ed. 1891, 28):
The meaning of the term ʾiʿlān is that you... raise the pitch of the voice and ‘make it known’ forcefully… The meaning of the term waḍʿ is that you lower the pitch at which you chant the word that has them [i.e. the low tone accents] and you do not ‘make the voice known’ nor raise its pitch, but rather you reduce its sound intensity.... The meaning of the term rafʿ is that it is intermediate between ʾiʿlān and waḍʿ.207
In physiological terms, when pashṭa occurred on a word with two vowels and penultimate stress such as it required a greater volume of lung air, both due to its increased duration and to the rise in subglottal pressure necessary to bring about an increase in intensity. One may, therefore, explain the reduction in the duration of the vowel with merkha as a means of decreasing air expenditure to counterbalance the increase in air expenditure elsewhere in the same expiration or ‘breath group’. It will be shown in the next section that this physiological factor also conditioned the length of vowels with secondary stress.
I.2.8.2. Syllables with the Secondary Stress
I.2.8.2.1. On Open Syllables with Long Vowels
414In general, a secondary stress falls on a long vowel in an open syllable that is separated from the main stress by at least one other syllable, i.e. there is a eurhythmic alternating sequence of prominent and non-prominent syllables. The secondary stress in these contexts may be marked by certain conjunctive accents, e.g.
L: ‘and the man’ (Gen. 4.1)
L: ‘in their lamentations’ (2 Chron. 35.25)
L: ‘my comfort’ (Jer. 8.18)
415In many cases the secondary stress is marked by a gaʿya sign, e.g.
L: ‘the man’ (Gen. 2.7)
416If the second syllable before the main stress syllable has a short vowel and is closed but some preceding syllable is open, then the secondary stress, in principle, falls on that syllable, e.g.
L: ‘the columns’ (Exod. 38.11)
L: ‘who are with them’ (1 Chron. 5.20)
417Similarly, if a vocalic shewa or ḥatef occurs two places back from the accent, the major gaʿya is placed on a preceding syllable, e.g.
L: ‘the ground’ (Gen. 9.2)
418An additional secondary stress may be marked by a gaʿya on an open syllable that is separated from the first secondary stress by at least one syllable, though such gaʿyas are rare in the early manuscripts, e.g.
L: ‘the Asrielite’ (Num. 26.31)
419A long vowel which is separated from the main stress syllable by a ḥaṭef vowel or shewa also takes secondary stress, e.g.
L: ‘goes up’ (Gen. 2.6)
L: ‘and they will serve’ (Jer. 30.9)
L: ‘they have kept’ (Deut. 33.9)
420We have seen that shewa after a long vowel is generally silent (§I.2.5.6.). The secondary stress does not, however, clash with the main stress since there is an intervening epenthetic syllable before the consonant with the silent shewa. e.g. [ˌ∫oː.om.ˈR̟iː.im]. A secondary stress may also occur on a long vowel that is separated from the main stress by a geminated consonant, e.g.
L: ‘the houses’ (Exod. 12.7)
L: ‘Oh!’ (Exod. 32.31)
421In such words, too, a syllable formed by an epenthetic vowel separates the syllable with the secondary stress from main stress: [hab.ˌbɔː.ɔt.ˈtʰiː.im].
In the metrical structure, secondary and main stresses in words such as and
would occur in adjacent feet, whereas in a word such as
there is an intervening foot between those of the stresses:
[ˌ∫ɔː.ɔm. | ˈR̟uː] |
(ˌ* .) | (ˈ*) |
[hab. | ˌbɔː.ɔt. | ˈtʰiː.im]. |
(*) | (ˌ* .) | (ˈ* .) |
[ˌhɔː | ʔɔː | ˈðɔː.ɔm] |
(ˌ*) | (*) | (ˈ* .) |
422The stress rhythm is, therefore, based on the sequence of phonetic syllables rather than the sequence of feet.
423In the early Masoretic sources, the gaʿya was not regarded as one of the accents but rather a sign to denote the slowing down of the reading. It appears, however, that it acquired a musical motif of its own in some cases. This is seen in the following passage on the gaʿya from Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ:
- 208 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.3.1.
[The gaʿya] should not be considered to belong either with the disjunctive accents or the conjunctive accents, since it is only an exhalation in speech, which carries the words forward… Its distinctive property is the imparting of a melody to the reading so that joy is diffused in the heart, in order to conduct the reading along.208
The term in the early sources is vocalized reflecting its origin as an Aramaic active participle of the verb
‘to roar, to low’, or, occasionally,
In Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ
has an Arabic broken plural
gawāʿī. The sign later came to be known as the
meteg, a term that was introduced by Yequtiʾel ha-Naqdan (first half of the thirteenth century) (Gumpertz 1958) and still widely used today.
424Yeivin, who carried out detailed studies of the gaʿya in the early manuscripts, classified it into two main categories (Yeivin 1968, 89–194; 1980, 240–64):
- Musical gaʿya. This type of gaʿya is related to the musical cantillation and generally marks some kind of secondary stress preceding the main accent. It is dependent on the syllable structure of the word and the type of accent that is adjacent to it.
- Phonetic gaʿya. This slows down the reading of vowels in various places to ensure the correct pronunciation of the word, usually to indicate that a following shewa should be made vocalic or to ensure that certain consonants were not slurred over.
- 209 In some Masoretic sources the terms (...)
The musical gaʿya is divided into a variety of categories. The type that marks a secondary accent on open syllables, as in is known as ‘major gaʿya’.209 In the early Masoretic codices, major gaʿya is not marked on all words that have a syllable structure suitable for it. Moreover, there are differences across the early manuscripts with regard to the frequency with which it is marked. This reflects the fact that the marking of major gaʿya was not standardized in the Tiberian tradition and it is rarely mentioned in the Masoretic treatises. It is marked infrequently in A, about 30 % of the possible cases, mainly on words with the disjunctive accents pashṭa or zaqef. It is marked slightly more frequently in L, in about 40 % of the possible cases. The other early manuscripts mark it in different proportions, some quite frequently (e.g. C marks it in about 75 % of the possible cases). In general, however, the early manuscripts mark it less frequently than later ones and some printed editions regularly mark it on every open syllable that is suitable for it.
Mordechai Breuer (1971) has shown that some accent sequences are determined by the number of intervening full vowels without taking into account mobile shewas or ḥaṭefs. In these systems, a vowel with secondary stress counts as two unstressed vowels. For instance, munaḥ before zaqef is transformed into pashṭa if the accent syllable of the word with zaqef is preceded by at least two full vowels: ‘and Sarah said’ (Gen. 21.6),
‘and Abraham said’ (Gen. 20.11 ,) ‘you will know by this’ (Num. 16.28—the ṣere with secondary stress counts as two full vowels),
‘and they will be blessed in your seed’ (Gen. 22.18—the shewa and the ḥaṭef vowel are not counted).
425Major gaʿya, as we have seen, often signals the occurrence of a secondary stress. The fact that some manuscripts do not always mark a gaʿya in a syllable that one would have expected to take the secondary stress does not necessarily imply that in the reading tradition the secondary stress was not pronounced. When the presence of a gaʿya on an open syllable has an effect on the distribution of the accents or of other gaʿyas, the effect is often sustained even when the gaʿya is not marked, the necessary condition being only that the open syllable could have been marked by a gaʿya (i.e. it is appropriate for secondary stress). A couple of examples of this will suffice:
- If zarqa has two conjunctive servi and the word bearing the zarqa has a major gaʿya, then the first servus before the zarqa is merkha. If, however, the word bearing the zarqa has no gaʿya, then the first servus is usually munaḥ. The merkha occurs even if the following word does not explicitly mark the gaʿya on the open syllable that is suitable for it.210
- In word structures that are suitable for taking either a minor gaʿya or a major gaʿya, such as וָאֶשְׁהַּמְּרָ֖ ה ‘and I kept myself’ (2 Sam. 22.24), the fact that the word can take a major gaʿya (in this case on the open syllable at the beginning of the word) obviates the occurrence of the minor gaʿya, even if the major gaʿya sign is not marked (Yeivin 1968, 141).
426Compare also some of the statements concerning the major gaʿya in the Masoretic literatureַ with reference to a gaʿya on a word with zarqa:
- 211 Sefer Ṭaʿame ha-Miqra (ed. Mercerus, 1565, Eiii):
‘The reader pronounces the gaʿya, whether it is written or not written.’211
- 212 Hebrew Maḥberet ha-Tījān (ed. J. Derenbourg 1871, 98):
‘In some books the gaʿya is written whereas in others it is not written but rather the knowledge of the reader is relied upon.’212
427It may be assumed, therefore, that the secondary stress fell on the appropriate syllable irrespective of whether it was marked graphically. A long vowel that had secondary stress was longer than an unstressed long vowel. This may be inferred from the statements in the early Masoretic and grammatical literature that a vowel with gaʿya is lengthened, e.g. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ:
428It has been shown above, moreover, that in some accent sequences a syllable with secondary stress was treated as equivalent to two unstressed syllables, implying that the duration of the vowel nucleus of the syllable with secondary stress was increased by virtue of the stress. The gaʿya sign was, in fact, called maʾarikh in some sources (Wickes 1887, 24; A. Ben-David 1957b, 390–91).
- 214 Cf. the passages from the Sefer Zikkaron and the Sefer Mikhlol quoted by Yeivin (1981b, 48–49).
Joseph and David Qimḥi say explicitly that a long vowel in a syllable that is not adjacent to the accent syllable (i.e. one that takes secondary stress) is lengthened, but not one that is in a syllable adjacent to the accent (and so does not take secondary stress), e.g. the qameṣ on the shin in the word is longer than that in
214
429It has been remarked above that the early Tiberian manuscripts differ in their consistency of marking the secondary stress by gaʿya. Those manuscripts that marked major gaʿya consistently emanated from a scribal circle that tended to give graphic expression to a relatively greater number of the phonetic details of the reading tradition. The trend towards a more complete graphic notation reached its apogee in many of the Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts, which in addition to the abundant marking of gaʿyas, also indicate subtle differences in the strength of consonants according to their phonetic environment (§I.3.3.). Yeivin has shown that in A, in which major gaʿyas are marked inconsistently, their notation is not random but follows certain trends. If the difference between the gaʿya notation of A and that of early manuscripts that mark them more consistently arises from a tendency to indicate less phonetic minutiae, we may postulate that the selective gaʿya notation of A corresponds to differences in the duration of vowels with secondary stress. That is to say, some vowels with secondary stress were longer than others and only the longer ones tended to be marked. This seems plausible, since the medieval sources state that the gaʿya was essentially a marker of vowel duration.
- 215 (...)
430The words that are marked with major gaʿya in A nearly all have disjunctive accents. It is very rarely marked on words with conjunctives (Yeivin 1968, 147–48). In conformity with the foregoing discussion, this may be interpreted as a reflection of the fact that vowels with secondary stress were generally shorter in words with conjunctives than in those with disjunctives. Such durational differences are not alluded to in the early Masoretic and grammatical literature. It should be pointed out, however, that the thirteenth-century naqdan, Yequtiʾel ha-Kohen bar Yehudah, the first scholar to deal systematically with the question of gaʿyas and secondary stress, states explicitly that ‘metegs (= gaʿyas) of disjunctives are greater than metegs of conjunctives’.215 This can be explained by the fact that words with disjunctive accents were read slower than words with conjunctives and so the relative duration of the constituent syllables was increased.
431Within the set of words with disjunctive accents, A marks major gaʿya most frequently on those with pashṭa. After pashṭa the accents with which it occurs most often are, in descending order, zaqef, ʾatnaḥ, ṭifḥa and reviaʿ (Yeivin 1968, 148–60). The major gaʿya, therefore, is marked predominantly with the low sustained tone accents. With regard to the accents with which gaʿya is marked most frequently, pashṭa and zaqef, Yeivin notes that the gaʿya generally does not occur if the word is milʿel, i.e. has the accent on the penultimate syllable (Yeivin 1968, 152, 156). It is reasonable to assume that the omission of the gaʿya before pashṭa and zaqef on milʿel words was connected with the fact that the low tone accents were lengthened with a concomitant rise in pitch and intensity when they fell on a penultimate syllable (see above). The duration of the vowel with secondary stress was evidently reduced in the same way as the duration of a vowel with merkha was reduced before a pashṭa on a milʿel word. In both cases, the reason for the reduction was that the increase in lung air required to sustain the longer duration and greater intensity of the pashṭa (and zaqef) necessitated a decrease in air expenditure elsewhere in the same breath group. Similarly, gaʿya was seldom marked on words with the high tone accents since these required a larger volume of air to sustain the greater subglottal pressure necessary for their higher intensity. The vowel with the secondary stress before such accents was, therefore, of shorter duration. When, however, the low tone accents pashṭa, zaqef, ʾatnaḥ and tifḥa were on the final syllable of a word, they required relatively little air expenditure since they were pronounced quite short and with low intensity (see above). There was, consequently, more air available for the articulation of other segments in the same breath group and so the secondary accent was pronounced with a relatively long duration.
432In his study of accent retraction (nesiga), Praetorius suggested that in word pairs in which the expected retraction of the accent did not take place, the accent of one or of both of the words was weak and so the clash of the two stress syllables was felt to be more acceptable. The circumstances in which the stress was weakened include:
433(i) Long accent groups, i.e. a disjunctive preceded by two or more words with conjunctives (Praetorius 1897, 11, 43);
434(ii) When a word pair in a short accent group has a close syntactic connection to a following accent group, e.g. when the second accent group is a complement of a verb contained in the preceding accent group (Praetorius 1897, 39), e.g. the prepositional phrase in:
‘Woe to him who builds a town with blood’ (Hab. 2.12)
435(iii) When one of the words of a short accent group has strong contrastive stress (Praetorius 1897, 51–58), e.g.
‘but he who takes refuge in ME will inherit the earth’ (Isa. 57.13)
436Nesiga sometimes also fails to occur in a short accent group when it is in close syntactic connection with the preceding accent group and contrastive stress falls on the last word of this accent group (Praetorius 1897, 51–58), e.g.
‘If (it is) THE LORD (who) has incited you against me’ (1 Sam. 26.19)
437In all these cases, it is plausible to assume that the stress was reduced due to a diminution in the supply of lung air. This diminution arose in the first two cases as a result of the fact that the breath group was relatively long. In the third case, a large proportion of the air of the breath group was expended on the word with strong contrastive stress and so the amount of air available for the rest of the breath group was correspondingly reduced. The reduction in the volume of air expended on a stressed syllable would have resulted in a decrease not only of the intensity of the vowel but also of its duration. Consequently, we may infer that the aforementioned factors that conditioned the occurrence patterns of nesiga were also conditioning factors of vowel duration. The reduction of vowel duration in the environment of contrastive stress arose for essentially the same reason as did the reduction of the duration of vowels with merkha or with secondary stress before high tone disjunctives.
- 216 Yeivin (1968, 150 [ʾatnaḥ], 151 [zaqef]).
438There is one feature of the distribution of major gaʿyas in the Aleppo Codex that may have been conditioned by the length of the breath group. Major gaʿya occurs with some accents more frequently when there are no preceding words with dependent conjunctives.216 The absence of preceding words with conjunctives may have motivated a shorter breath group and so given rise to a corresponding increase in the duration of the stressed vowels. It is, of course, not possible to establish with absolute certainty where the boundaries of breath groups occurred in the medieval Tiberian reading tradition. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that they coincided to some extent with the boundaries of accent groups and/or of syntactic units.
I.2.8.2.2. On Closed Syllables with Short Vowels (Minor Gaʿya)
- 217 Cf. Yeivin (1980, 244).
Gaʿya also marked secondary stress on closed syllables with short vowels, i.e. vowels that are unspecified as to length in their phonological features (viz. pataḥ /a/, segol /ɛ/, ḥireq /i/, qibbuṣ/shureq /u/, /o/, /e/), as opposed to a vowel that is inherently specified by a phonological feature as long (long qameṣ /ɔ̄/, ḥolem /ō/, ṣere /ē/, long shureq /ū/, long ḥireq /ī/) (for details of this classification of vowels see §I.2.3.). This occurs most consistently on the first syllable of words with disjunctive accents that have the following patterns: [ˌmiˑθpʰalpʰaˈliːim],
[ˌmiˑθ̟qɑttˁɑˈliːim] (with a geminated consonant) and
[ˌmiˑθpʰaːʕaˈliːim] (with a ḥaṭef preceded by a vowel of the same quality).217 These are patterns in which the main accent syllable is preceded by sequences of two closed syllables with short vowels followed by a mobile shewa or by a sequence of one closed syllable with a short vowel and an open syllable followed by a syllable with a ḥatef vowel that is the same quality as the vowel of the preceding open syllable.
439Such vowels of unspecified length with gaʿya in words in these patterns are generally transcribed in the Karaite transcriptions with an Arabic mater lectionis, which indicates that they were lengthened by the secondary stress, e.g.
[ˌvaˑɟɟi∫muˈʕuː] (BL Or 2544 fol. 118v, 4 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 4.31 ‘and they heard’)
[ˌbaˑmmaːħaˈnƐː] (BL Or 2544, fol. 32v, 1 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 32.22 ‘in the camp’)
[ˌmiˑmmi∫pʰoˈħoːoθ] (BL Or 2546, fol. 132r, 11 | L [BHS]:
Num. 36.1 ‘from the families of’)
[ˌwuˑljaːʕaˈ̟qoːov] (BL Or 2546, fol. 85v, 8 | L [BHS]:
Num. 32.11 ‘and to Jacob’)
- 218 Cf. Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, 302, 383).
- 219 Yequtiʾel ha-Naqdan refers to the gaʿya in a closed syllable as ‘heavy’ (...)
In the Masoretic literature, this type of gaʿya was termed ‘minor gaʿya whereas the gaʿya that marked the incidence of secondary stress on an open syllable was termed, as remarked, ‘major gaʿya’
218 This implies that when secondary stress fell on a short vowel in a closed syllable, the vowel was not lengthened as much as a vowel in an open syllable with secondary stress.219 Evidence for this lesser degree of duration is the fact that some Karaite manuscripts that transcribe long vowels in open syllables or syllables with the main stress with an Arabic mater lectionis omit a mater lectionis in a syllable with secondary stressed marked by a minor gaʿya, e.g.
[ˌvaˑɟɟi∫R̟ɑˈsˁuː] (BL Or 2542, fol. 43r, 6 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 1.7 ‘and they swarmed’)
[ˌniˑθħakkʰaˈmɔː] (BL Or 2542, fol. 43r, 9 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 1.10 ‘let us deal wisely’)
[ˌwuˑljaːʕaˈ̟qoːov] (BL Or 2542, fol. 49r, 13 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 6.8 ‘and to Jacob’)
440For this reason, the vowel with minor gaʿya is represented as half-long in my phonetic transcription of the forms, e.g. [aˑ], [iˑ], [uˑ].
441Some Karaite transcriptions regularly omit a mater lectionis only when the minor gaʿya is on one of the high vowels ḥireq [i] or shureq [u], but transcribes lower vowels that have minor gaʿya with a mater lectionis, e.g.
[ˌvaˑɟɟittʰaˈnuː] (BL Or 2549 fol. 18v, 9 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 4.16 ‘and they gave’)
[ˌliˑmnaːʔaˈsˁɑːɑj] (BL Or 2549 fol. 87r, 6 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 23.17 ‘to those who despise me’)
[ˌwuˑχmisrˁɑˈfoːoθ] (BL Or 2549 fol. 112r, 14 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 34.5 ‘and like the burning of’)
- 220 For further details concerning the representation of minor gaʿya in the Karaite transcriptions, se (...)
442This appears to reflect the universal phonetic phenomenon whereby, all other things being equal, high vowels tend to be of shorter duration than low vowels. This difference in duration can be above the threshold of perception (Lehiste 1970, 18–19). Evidently, the scribes of the Karaite transcriptions perceived the high vowels with minor gaʿya to be of shorter duration than the low vowels. Since many other transcriptions represent the high vowels with minor gaʿya with matres lectionis, we can assume that the high vowels with minor gaʿya were not completely short, but half-long vowels of a shorter duration relative to low vowels.220
443Attempts were made to standardize the distribution of the minor gaʿya in the Tiberian Masoretic tradition and there is general agreement among the early manuscripts in its marking. This standardization is reflected by the fact that a large proportion of the differences between Aharon ben Asher and Moshe ben Naphtali that are recorded in Kitāb al-Khilaf of Mishaʾel ben ʿUzziʾel relate to the minor gaʿya.
Minor gaʿya occurs in the patterns described above across the boundary of words that are connected by maqqef, e.g. ‘on the ass’ (Exod. 4.20). Minor gaʿya also occurs less consistently on a range of other related structures in which the syllable with the gaʿya is separated from the main accent syllable by at least one other syllable and a vocalic shewa, e.g.
L: (with vocalic shewa additional to the
pattern) ‘the Canaanite woman’ (1 Chron. 2.3)
L: (with a vowel of different quality before the ḥaṭef) ‘and they fought’ (Josh. 10.36)
444It very rarely occurs on a syllable that is separated from the accent by only one syllable, e.g.
L: ‘a conspiracy is found’ (Jer. 11.9).
- 221 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.3.1.
- 222 Ed. Dotan (1967, 108, §1). Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, on the other hand, does not consider gaʿya to be an a (...)
445Yeivin (1968, 89–194; 1980, 240–64) classifies major gaʿya and minor gaʿya as musical gaʿyas and it is reasonable to assume that the secondary stress that they represented was adorned by a short musical motif. The frequent use of conjunctive accents on open syllables to mark the secondary stress supports this view. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ described gaʿya as bringing about ‘the extension of the melody so that joy is diffused in the heart, … animating the reader and moving him to read more’.221 One may interpret this as referring to some kind of melismatic embellishment. The Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿaimim, moreover, classifies gaʿya among the accents, presumably on account of its musical value.222 Secondary stress normally fell on a long vowel in an open syllable since it was a feature of long vowels that they were more amenable to being stretched (‘dehnungsfähig’, according to the terminology of Trubetzskoy 1936; 1938) than short vowels and so could accommodate the musical contour of the secondary stress more easily. When secondary stress fell on a short vowel, the vowel was lengthened but its duration was less than that of a long vowel in an open syllable that had secondary stress. It was for this reason that short vowels in closed syllables were not usually suitable for secondary stress, since they were not lengthened enough to accommodate the melisma of the stressed syllable.
The occurrence of the secondary stress of minor gaʿya on short vowels in closed syllables in the patterns and
can be explained by the hypothesis that the sequence of two CVC-CVC syllables with short vowel nuclei functioned, under certain conditions, analogously to a single syllable with a long bimoraic nucleus CVV. Secondary stress was allowed to fall on a short vowel in such patterns since the motif associated with the stress was spread over both the stressed syllable and the syllable that followed it. There subsequently followed a buffer syllable in the form of a mobile shewa or haṭef, which separated the melismatic unit of the secondary stress from the main stress syllable. Just as the most prominent component of the CVCCVC sequence accommodating the secondary stress of minor gaʿya was the first syllable, reflected by the lengthening of its vowel, so in a bimoraic CVV syllable the main prominence was on the first vowel mora, which is the most sonorous segment of the syllable (Kager 1993).
It would be more precise to say that the melisma of the secondary stress spread across the strong syllables of two metrical feet. This explains why minor gaʿya is frequently found also on structures such as ‘the Canaanite woman’ (1 Chron. 2.3) and
‘what you cook’ (Exod. 16.23) (Yeivin 1980, 246), in which the syllable with secondary stress is separated from the buffer syllable by two phonetic syllable nuclei (vocalic shewa + pataḥ) but only one metrical foot:
[(ˌhaˑk.) | (kʰa.naː.) | (ʕa.ˈniːiθ)] |
(ˌ*) | (. *) | (. ˈ* .) |
[(ʔa.ˌ∫ƐˑR̟) | (tʰa.va∫) | (∫a.ˈluː)] |
(. ˌ*) | (. *) | (. ˈ*) |
A form such as ‘from before you’ (Lev. 18.24) was unsuitable for minor gaʿya since the shewa belongs to the second foot and the strong syllable of this foot is not separated from the main stress by the statutory buffer syllable:
[(mip.) | (pʰa.neː.) | (ˈχƐːƐm)] |
(*) | (. *) | (* .) |
It is for this reason that the separation between minor gaʿya and the main stress had to be a full vowel + mobile shewa/ḥaṭef vowel but could not be the same in reverse sequence
446A secondary accent marked by minor gaʿya does not occur on all closed syllables that are separated from the main stress by a second foot and a buffer syllable. It tends to occur only in those circumstances in which the vowel of the syllable under secondary stress was maximally long. In conditions in which the duration of the vowel was reduced, the minor gaʿya tends not to be marked. It is not clear whether the absence of the minor gaʿya indicates that the secondary stress was omitted or whether it denotes that the vowel was still under secondary stress but of shorter duration and, consequently, unable to accommodate a melisma.
447There were two major conditioning factors of vowel duration that affected the duration of the vowel with minor gaʿya. One of these was the tempo at which the word containing minor gaʿya was read. When chanted at a slower tempo, the vowels were stretched. Consequently, the vowels of words that had disjunctive accents were generally longer in duration than the vowels of words with conjunctives. This factor has already been inferred from the distribution of major gaʿyas. From the distribution of minor gaʿyas one may infer another factor, viz. there was a strong tendency to make the interval between the secondary stress and the main stress in all words isochronous, irrespective of differences in the number of syllables that separated them. This meant that the duration of the syllables between the two stress beats including those on which the stress occurred varied according to their number. The more intervening syllables there were, the shorter was their duration. The variation in duration of the syllable would doubtless have been achieved by lengthening or shortening of the vowels that were the most ‘stretchable’ constituents of a syllable. It is not clear whether this affected all the vowels, both long and short, or just the long vowels, which, by their nature, had a more flexible duration.
- 223 Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, §15), Dotan (1964, 65), Yeivin (1968, 97–98).
In the conditions in which minor gaʿya was regularly marked, the vowel under secondary stress was maximally long according to these two aforementioned criteria: (i) The gaʿya normally occurs when the word has a disjunctive accent but not when it has a conjunctive; (ii) Apart from the syllable that was necessary to carry part of the melisma of the secondary stress, the material constituting the unstressed buffer between the two stress beats was the absolute minimum, viz. an open syllable with a short vowel nucleus (vocalic shewa or a ḥaṭef vowel): and
When the buffer between the two stresses was longer, the duration of the vowels of the word was reduced out of an effort to keep the time interval between them the same and so the gaʿya was usually omitted. This explains the phenomenon described in the Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim whereby the gaʿya was omitted if the structures that regularly had it were attached to a following word by maqqef, e.g.
‘and they fell there’ (Gen. 14.10).223 Even forms that have no more than an additional vocalic shewa between the two stress syllables, such as
‘the Canaanite woman’ (1 Chron. 2.3) and
‘what you cook’ (Exod. 16.23) exhibit slightly less consistency in the placement of minor gaʿya than the ‘fully regular structures’ (Yeivin 1968, 107). Forms which have a bimoraic syllable as a buffer, i.e. an independent foot, rather than a light monomoraic syllable with mobile shewa or ḥaṭef, such as
‘to war’ (Num. 21.33) do not have gaʿya with any degree of regularity (Yeivin 1968, 117; 1980, 247). By contrast, additional syllables preceding the secondary stress fell outside the isochronous interval between the two stress beats and so had no influence on the duration of the vowels, e.g.
‘and the knife’ (Gen. 22.6).
448Minor gaʿya was marked with equal consistency before all the disjunctives. The duration of a vowel with minor gaʿya, unlike that of a vowel with major gaʿya, was not reduced significantly as the result of greater air expenditure on a subsequent high tone accent. This was most likely because the relatively short duration of a vowel with minor gaʿya required by its very nature far less air expenditure than a long vowel with major gaʿya. As remarked above, however, the Karaite transcriptions reflect differences in duration in the vowel with minor gaʿya according to intrinsic differences in duration between high and low vowels.
If an open syllable preceded the syllable that took minor gaʿya in a form of regular structure, the secondary stress fell on this open syllable and was either marked with major gaʿya or was left without graphical representation, e.g. ‘and I kept myself’ (A, 2 Sam. 22.24; cf. Yeivin 1968, 98). A long vowel in an open syllable was, all other things being equal, more suitable for taking the melisma of the secondary stress than a sequence of two short syllable nuclei. The duration of a stressed vowel in an open syllable, moreover, was not reduced by the pressure of isochrony between stress beats to the extent that it could not accommodate the melisma.
By this argument, in the structure one would have expected that the vowel in the open syllable before the haṭef could have accommodated the melisma of the secondary stress, since this vowel was long, as shown by the Karaite transcriptions, e.g.
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 67v, 2 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 22.9 ‘and he bound’)
(BL Or 2544, fol. 32v, 11 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 32.24 ‘and he caused to pass over’)
(BL Or 2540, fol. 12v, 2 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 4.20 ‘upon the donkey’)
When a long vowel in this position is followed by an ordinary shewa, minor gaʿya generally does not occur (Yeivin 1968 ,111), e.g. ‘so they may be ashamed’ (Ezek. 43.10). Here the secondary stress evidently generally fell on the syllable before the shewa: [vi.jik.ˌkʰɔː.ɔl.ˈmuː]. When the long vowel is followed by a laryngeal/pharyngeal with a vowel of a different quality, e.g.
‘and they fought’ (Josh. 10.5), the tendency for the word to have minor gaʿya is greater than when it is followed by a non-guttural consonant with shewa
but less than when the vowel preceding the ḥaṭef is of the same quality
If the word has pashṭa, for example, there is a preference to have secondary stress in the form of a major gaʿya on the syllable before the guttural rather than minor gaʿya on the preceding syllables, e.g.
‘and they were called’ (Jud. 10.17; cf. Yeivin 1968, 109).
- 224 Menachem Cohen (1982a, 66, 67, 69, 70, 73) has found this feature of gaʿya notation in the manuscr (...)
449These facts can be explained by the assumption that the duration of the vowel varied in each of these three structures, those of shorter duration being less suitable for taking the full secondary stress melisma than those of longer duration. In some manuscripts that exhibit a selective notation of major gaʿya, there is a greater tendency for the major gaʿya to be omitted on a vowel before a ḥaṭef than on a long vowel before a shewa.224 This was probably motivated by the shorter duration of the vowel before a ḥaṭef.
450A vowel in an open syllable that is followed by a ḥaṭef of the same quality must be considered to have been the shortest of the three types of vowel. The rules for accent sequences that treated a syllable with secondary stress as two syllables counted a vowel preceding a ḥaṭef of the same quality as only one syllable (M. Breuer 1971, 184, n.45). Consequently, if any secondary accent at all fell on such vowels, it could not have increased the vowel duration to the full length of other vowels in open syllables under secondary stress. One may also adduce as evidence of the relatively short duration of vowels of this type the fact that they do not usually take munaḥ before zaqef where the occurrence of munaḥ would have been expected (Yeivin 1968, 201–2; Breuer 1971, 184, n.45). It is plausible to interpret this as being due to the unsuitability of the vowels to accommodate the necessary melismatic structure of the accent due to their short duration.
451The relatively short duration of a vowel before a ḥaṭef of the same quality was conditioned by two factors.
- 225 E.g. Lehiste (1970, 20).
- 226 E.g. Öhman (1966), Browman and Goldstein (1989).
452First factor: A number of phoneticians have shown that in some languages the duration of a vowel varies according to the extent of the movement of the speech organs required in order to come from the vowel position to the position of the following phonetic segments. The greater the extent of movement, the longer the vowel.225 It may be inferred that this principle influenced vowel duration in Tiberian Hebrew. In the sequence of a vowel, a laryngeal/pharyngeal, and a ḥaṭef of the same quality, no significant movement of speech organs in the oral cavity was required to make the transition from the first member to the last. There were two relevant processes involved: the tongue position for the two vowels, and the speech organ movement and muscle activity required to articulate the intervening consonant. Phonetic segments are not produced in speech as independent units, but rather the sounds overlap and flow into one continuously changing stream of sound. Several phoneticians have postulated on the basis of studies of gestures in the vocal tract that the tongue moves from vowel shape to vowel shape with the consonantal gestures superimposed, overlapping in time with the articulatory gestures for the vowels.226 Therefore in a sequence of vowel + consonant + vowel when the two vowels are of the same quality the speech organ movement necessary to pass from the first vowel to the second would always be less than when the two vowels were of different quality, irrespective of what the intervening consonant might be.
- 227 Another relevant parallel can be found in stress placement patterns in the Modern South Arabian la (...)
- 228 There is some evidence that the duration of a vowel in an open syllable was also reduced when it w (...)
453Second factor: In Tiberian Hebrew the patterns of stress and the distribution of the accents only reflect a consistent reduction in the duration of the first vowel when the intervening consonant is a pharyngeal/laryngeal. There is no evidence for a similar reduction when an oral consonant intervenes between two vowels of the same quality, except, occasionally, when the consonant is a lax continuative, especially sonorants. An important factor contributing to the reduction of duration must, therefore, have been the phonetic nature of the pharyngeals/ laryngeals. It is relevant here to draw attention to a phenomenon that is attested in North African Arabic dialects whereby long vowels are shortened before pharyngeal consonants, Moroccan, Jewish Algiers: draʿ ‘arm’ < *dhirāʿ, jnaḥ ‘wing’ < *jināḥ (Brockelmann 1908 vol. 1, 64; Marcel Cohen 1912, 135). Brockelmann explains this as the result of the articulation of the pharyngeal taking away part of the duration of the vowel. This was no doubt due to the weak vowel-like nature of non-oral consonants.227 We may, therefore, identify this as a second factor that is likely to have reduced the duration of Hebrew vowels before gutturals.228
Although the articulation of in Tiberian Hebrew was weak, it was only reduced completely to zero in the case of א and ה in a number of word forms, such as
and forms that used ה as a mater lectionis for a final long vowel. Where
were articulated, they often caused a lowering of adjacent vowels, in many cases to the quality of pataḥ, the lowest vowel. This was evidently occasioned by the narrowing of the pharynx, which was achieved by pulling the back of the tongue into the pharynx and this, in turn, was facilitated by the lowering of the tongue. The association of
with a low vowel shape may explain the following phenomenon of gaʿya distribution in the early manuscripts that has been noted by Yeivin (1968, 99-100). Among the cases of words of regular structure for minor gaʿya that, contrary to expectation, do not take minor gaʿya with a disjunctive accent, there is a large proportion of forms of the pattern
with segol + haṭef segol, e.g.
‘and he took hold of’ (Jud. 16.3),
‘and I will do it’ (Isa. 46.11). This can be interpreted as indicating that a long vowel preceding
with a haṭef vowel of the same quality tended to be shorter in proportion to the lowness of the vowel quality. The tongue position for pataḥ was the closest to that which was appropriate for the narrowing of the pharynx and so less movement of articulatory organs was required. We may again draw a parallel with North African Arabic, where the vowel shortening before pharyngeals is restricted in principle to long low ā vowels.
Finally, if a long vowel was followed by a closed syllable beginning with and containing a vowel nucleus of the same quality, it was apparently longer than a long vowel followed by
with a ḥaṭef of the same quality. This is shown by the regular occurrence of munaḥ on the long vowel before the closed syllable to mark secondary stress before zaqef, e.g.
‘for the sin offerings’ (Neh. 10.34) (Yeivin 1968, 203). This was probably due to the fact that a consonantal onset of a prosodically strong syllable (CVC, CVV) was of a stronger articulation, therefore less vowel-like, than that of a prosodically weak syllable containing vocalic shewa or a ḥaṭef. This would have made the consonant less likely to take away duration from the preceding vowel.
It follows from the first factor discussed above that a vowel preceding a laryngeal/pharyngeal with a haṭef of a different quality, as in ‘and they fought’ (Josh. 10.36) and
‘of our nearest kin’ (Ruth 2.20), was of a slightly longer duration than a vowel before a haṭef of the same quality. This was because the transition to the haṭef vowel required some movement of tongue and lip position. Through the operation of the second factor, however, the following guttural took away some of the preceding vowel duration and so these vowels did not have quite their full duration. Although they took secondary stress in the form of munaḥ before zaqef in preference to minor gaʿya, e.g.
‘ [do not] fight’ (1 Kings 22.31), they were, in general, not so suitable for secondary stress as were long vowels of full duration. There was, consequently, a certain tendency for secondary stress in other circumstances to pass over a syllable with such a vowel when conditions were favourable for the melisma of the stress to be spread over two syllables instead.
In forms such as ‘so they may be ashamed’ (Ezek. 43.10), it may be expected from the operation of the first factor that the long qameṣ would be reduced in duration since this was followed by an epenthetic of the same quality: [vi.jik.- kʰɔː.ɔl.ˈmuː]. Such structures, however, exhibit a lesser tendency to take minor gaʿya than forms such as
‘and they fought’ (Josh. 10.5). Evidently, the qameṣ in forms such as
was longer in duration and more suitable for taking the full secondary stress melisma. This would have been due to the absence of a guttural consonant following the vowel that would have taken over part of the duration of the vowel.
I.2.9. Shewa Gaʿya
- 229 For detailed treatments of the distribution of shewa gaʿya see Yeivin (1968, 128–37, 252–61; 1980, (...)
454The gaʿya sign is sometimes marked next to shewa or ḥaṭef signs. This is referred to by the terms gaʿyat shewa or shewa gaʿya. The second term will be used here. It is rare in the twenty-one books (only some 200 cases occur) but is common in the three books. It is a musical shewa, but is often marked before a guttural, which suggests that there may be also a phonetic motivation for its use.229
There are some parallels between the occurrence of shewa gaʿya and that of minor gaʿya. Shewa gaʿya occurs mainly in words with disjunctive accents. Some cases of shewa gaʿya, moreover, occur on patterns that correspond to the regular patterns for minor gaʿya, viz. and
(the counterparts of
and
), e.g.
L: ‘you should set free’ (Jer. 34.14)
L: ‘when you hear’ (1 Chron. 14.15)
L: ‘in the ascent of’ (2 Chron. 32.33)
455The occurrence of shewa gaʿya, however, is not so concentrated on these regular patterns as the minor gaʿya is concentrated on its regular patterns. Gaʿya is found in a variety of other patterns on a shewa or ḥatef that is separated from the accent by at least one vowel, e.g.
L: ‘but’ (Job 12.7)
L: ‘go out’ (Cant. 1.8)
L: ‘you will see and you will read’ (Jer. 51.61)
L: ‘and it will be’ (Hos. 2.1)
L: ‘and let them say’ (Joel 2.17)
L: ‘when they brought out’ (Josh. 10.24)
L: ‘his sneezings’ (Job 41.10)
L: ‘and all the princes’ (2 Kings 24.14)
456Shewa gaʿya also occurs on a conjunctive vav when it has a shureq before a labial, e.g.
L: ‘and what do you awaken?’ (Cant. 8.4)
457Given the strict conditions of word length for the occurrence of the secondary stress of minor gaʿya, these freer occurrence patterns of shewa gaʿya suggest that its motivation was not exclusively to mark a secondary stress. Rather, in some cases at least, its purpose was to slow down reading for orthoepic reasons. As remarked, this is likely to apply to some cases where it occurs before a guttural. Evidence for this is the fact that there are instances where shewa gaʿya occurs before a guttural on a word that has an ʾazla accent sign that itself marks a secondary stress, e.g.
L: ‘and it will be’ (Isa. 28.4)
458In most cases, shewa gaʿya occurs at the beginning of a word, as in the examples cited above. In a few cases in the three books, it occurs in the middle of a word, e.g.
L, A: ‘blessed is the man’ (Psa. 1.1)
L: ‘they search out iniquities’ (A:
Psa. 64.7)
459In both these cases, the shewa gaʿya clashes with an immediately preceding gaʿya or merkha, suggesting that it reflected the slowing of the reading for orthoepic purposes rather than a secondary stress beat.
According to Masoretic treatises, a shewa with gaʿya was read with the length of a full vowel. This is seen, for example, in a passage concerning the pronunciation of shewa before gutturals in the Treatise on the Shewa edited by Levy (1936, ):
- 230
It (the shewa) should not be pronounced (in the word
) as a pure qameṣ, equal (to the following qameṣ), i.e. with lengthening, but rather it is pronounced short, as if it were qameṣ, but not a full qameṣ, e.g.
but you do not say
for that is a mistake. Likewise, when it is adjacent to vowels other than qameṣ, it is pronounced short. This is also the case when two shewas come together, as in
and likewise
Follow this (rule), do not add to it or subtract from it, unless gaʿya occurs with shewa, in which case you make it long and it is pronounced as a qameṣ. For instance, the word
when you add gaʿya to the shewa, i.e.
is pronounced
with a full qameṣ. The same is so in the case of segol, e.g.
is pronounced
Likewise
‘go out’ (Cant. 1.8) is read with ḥireq as if it were
‘our captors asked us’ (Psa. 137.3) is read
‘you will love being simple’ (Prov. 1.22) is read
All such instances of shewa are pronounced full with the pronunciation of the (vowel of the) adjacent guttural letter, on account of the principle of the gaʿya, for it is the gaʿya that lengthens them. If there is no gaʿya, shewa is always pronounced short and is not lengthened. This condition is never changed. So it is with all the occurrences of shewa that we have discussed, all instances of its vocalic realization follow this rule.230
- 231 E.g. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ (short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.5.1, §II.S.5.3), Baer a (...)
460The purport of this and similar passages from other Masoretic treatises231 is that a shewa with gaʿya was pronounced as a long vowel, which was equal in status to a full vowel represented by a vowel sign.
461The Karaite transcriptions into Arabic indicate that shewa gaʿya was pronounced as a long vowel, since they represent it with a mater lectionis, e.g.
(BL Or 2547 fol. 15r, 11 | L [BHS]:
Josh. 13.6 ‘as an inheritance’)
(BL Or 2552 fol. 16v, 13 | L [BHS]:
Job. 12.3 ‘like you’)
(BL Or 2553 fol. 5v, 5 | L [BHS]:
Prov. 3.18 ‘and those who support her’)
462The default pronunciation of vocalic shewa was with the quality of pataḥ [a]. This explains why the shewa gaʿya in the foregoing examples is represented by Arabic mater lectionis ʾalif, which represents long [aː]. A lengthened ḥaṭef pataḥ is likewise represented by mater lectionis ʾalif.
463A mater lectionis is, however, sometimes omitted in the transcriptions of shewa gaʿya. This is regularly the case in many manuscripts in contexts where shewa has a higher vowel quality than pataḥ before yod or gutturals, e.g.
(BL Or 2552 fol. 63r, 15 | L [BHS]:
Job. 36.11 ‘and they will serve’), in which the shewa before yod is pronounced with the quality of ḥireq [ˌviˑjaːʕaˈvoːðuː]
(BL Or 2552 fol. 18v, 7 | L [BHS]:
Job. 12.7 ‘but’), in which the shewa has the quality of shureq before a guttural followed by shureq [ˌwuˑʔuːˈlɔːɔm]
(BL Or 2552 fol. 87v, 14 | L [BHS]:
Job. 41.10 ‘his sneezings’)
(BL Or 2554 fol. 35r, 1 | L [BHS]:
Cant. 1.8 ‘go out’), in which the shewa is pronounced with the quality of ḥireq before a guttural followed by ḥireq [ˌsˁiˑʔiːˈlɔːɔχ]
(BL Or 2549 fol. 112r, 6 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 34.3 ‘and your eyes’), in which the shewa is pronounced with the quality of ṣere before a guttural followed by ṣere [ˌveˑʕeːˈnƐːχɔː]
(BL Or 2553 fol. 22v, 8 | L [BHS]:
Prov. 8.36 ‘he who misses me’), in which the shewa is pronounced with the quality of ḥolem before a guttural followed by ḥolem [ˌvoˑħoːotˁˈʔiː]
464In such manuscripts a mater lectionis is also sometimes omitted when the shewa with gaʿya has the quality of [a], e.g.
(BL Or 2549 fol. 115r, 14 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 34.14 ‘you will send off’)
(BL Or 2552 fol. 85r, 3 | L [BHS]:
Job. 40.30 ‘merchants’)
465This distribution of matres lectionis representing shewa gaʿya in the Karaite transcriptions corresponds closely to the distribution we have seen representing minor gaʿya. This reflects a lesser duration of such vowels than vowels in other contexts. In my phonetic transcription of such forms, therefore, I transcribe the vowels with half-length [aˑ], [iˑ], etc. Moreover, vowels of shewa gaʿya with a high quality were of a lesser duration than those with the low quality [a], as was the case with vowels marked by minor gaʿya. Manuscripts that do not represent high vowels of shewa gaʿya or minor gaʿya would regularly represent them if they are long vowels that are represented by vowel signs in an open syllable, as in
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 113v, 5 | L [BHS]:
Deut. 23.11 ‘from outside’)
466Likewise, inherently long vowels followed by silent shewa are regularly transcribed by a mater lectionis, as in
(BL Or 2547 fol. 7v, 1 | L [BHS]:
Josh. 4.14 ‘and they (mpl) feared’)
The fact that the ḥireq vowel in a word such as מ ִַ ח ַּ֣ ץו (Josh. 4.14) is regularly represented by a mater lectionis but a vowel of the same quality with shewa gaʿya in a word such as (Job. 36.11) is not regularly represented by a mater lectionis suggests that an open syllable containing vocalic shewa with gaʿya was different in status from the open syllable with a vowel sign. The syllable with a ḥireq vowel in a word such as מ ִַ ח ֣וּ ץ was bimoraic (CVV) whereas the vocalic shewa with gaʿya was monomoraic (CV) but was increased in duration phonetically by the gaʿya. The same applied to CVC syllables, in which the single vowel mora was increased in duration by a minor gaʿya. We may say that the shewa gaʿya stretched phonetically a short vowel, but did not, in principle, cause it to be lengthened to the duration of a long vowel with underlying bimoraic length. The underlying syllable structure and phonetic syllable structure of a word such as
(Jer. 34.3) ‘and your eyes’ would be: /vʕē.nƐ̄.χɔ̄/ [ˌveˑ.ʕeː.ˈnƐː.χɔː]. In a word such as
‘from man’ (Gen. 6.7), on the other hand, the long ṣere would be in the underlying syllable structure: /mē.ʔɔ̄.ðɔ̄.m/ [ˌmeː.ʔɔː.ˈðɔː.ɔm].
467This appears to contradict the passage in the Treatise on the Shewa cited above, which claimed that a shewa with gaʿya was pronounced like a full long vowel. A more nuanced statement is, however, found in another passage in this treatise:
- 232 Ed. Levy (1936, כה), lacunae supplied by CUL Or 1080.13.3.2, fol. 1r:
If someone objected and said to you: If shewa according to you is marked only with short vowels, why do you vocalize
‘God’ with shewa, in which the ʾalef has a long vowel. Likewise,
‘my Lord’,
‘have you seen?’ (1 Kings 21.29), ‘you did well’ (2 Chron. 6.8),
‘go and love a woman’ (Hos. 3.1), and also
‘since your days (began)’ (Job 38.12),
‘is it from your understanding?’ (Job 39.26). The answer is that in all these words, and the like, when the gaʿya is removed, they are pronounced with a short vowel. We vocalize them with shewa on account of this shortness. The gaʿya is a subsidiary addition. We should not change the basic rule on account of a subsidiary case.232
468This passage could be interpreted as reflecting the notion that although the gaʿya lengthens the vowel of the shewa, it does not fundamentally change the status of the shewa to that of a full vowel. This can be reformulated in terms of metric analysis by the hypothesis that a gaʿya on a vocalic shewa does not change the foot structure, i.e. the shewa still remains within the foot of the following vowel and is not parsed as a separate foot. The foot structure of the words ( ת ְׁ ש ַ לּ ְ ח ַּּ֤ ו 1 Sam. 6.3) and such as ְ ת ׁ ש ַ לּ ְ ח ִּ֡ ו (Jer. 34.14) would be the same (indicated by brackets):
[(ta.∫al.) (la.ˈħuː)]
[(ˌtaˑ.∫al.) (la.ˈħuː)]
This should be contrasted with a CV syllable with a lexical vowel such as the ḥaṭef qameṣ in a word such as ‘holinesses’ (Exod. 26.33). We have seen that such syllables are in their own separate foot, although, since it consists of a monomoraic syllable, it should be classified as degenerate (§I.2.7.). When these take secondary stress, they are lengthened to the full duration of long bimoraic vowels in open syllables and represented by a full qameṣ vowel. A gaʿya marking the secondary stress should, therefore, be interpreted as a major gaʿya. This prosodic structure was facilitated by the fact that they have their own foot:
‘holinesses’ (Exod. 29.37) [(ˌ̟qɔː.) (ðɔː.) (ˈ∫iː.im)]
469The syllable of a shewa with gaʿya, by contrast, remains subordinate prosodically to the following syllable in an iambic foot (. *). It is lengthened phonetically by the gaʿya but does not achieve the full bimoraic weight of the following syllable of the foot. This could be analysed as a case of ‘multi-plane metrics’ (Bosch 1996, Gordon 2006, Ryan 2016) whereby the phonetically prominent position and the metrically prominent position in a prosodic domain such as a foot or prosodic word do not necessarily coincide. The shewa with gaʿya is phonetically prominent in the foot due to the lengthening of the vowel, but the following syllable remains the metrically prominent syllable in the foot due to its weight and stronger beat.
470In the Karaite transcriptions one case has been identified in which a shewa with gaʿya is transcribed with gemination of the following consonant and the shewa is replaced in the vocalization with a full vowel:
(BL Or 2555 fol. 19r, 5 | L [BHS]:
Ecc. 3.22 ‘in his works’)
471Here the phonetic prominence and the metrical prominence have been brought into line, in that the syllable of the strengthed shewa has become bimoraic and so parsed as an independent foot.
I.2.10. Metrical Epenthesis
- 233 Yeivin (1980, 262) refers to this as a phonetic gaʿya.
472As we have seen, patterns of secondary stress in principle exhibit eurhythmic alternating sequences of prominent and non-prominent syllables. The clash of a prominent syllable with the main stress immediately adjacent to a prominent syllable with secondary stress marked by an accent or gaʿya is, in principle, avoided. There are some cases, however, where such a clash appears to take place. These include words in which a syllable with a short vowel immediately before the syllable with the main stress is marked by gaʿya. Such patterns occur when the contact between the two syllables consists of two weak consonants, i.e. the first syllable has a weak consonant as its coda and the following syllable has a weak consonant as its onset. This occurrence of gaʿya is found, for example, on a pataḥ where the syllable contact consists of coda that is a guttural and an onset that is one of the sonorants yod, lamed, or nun, or another guttural,233 e.g.
[ja.ˌ∫aˑʕ.ˈjɔː.huː] ‘Isaiah’ (Isa. 1.1)
[wuf.ˌθaˑḥ.ˈjɔː] ‘and Pethahiah’ (Neh. 11.24)
[jaˌðaˑʕˌjɔː] ‘Jedaiah’ (Neh. 12.6)
[∫a.ˌmaˑʕ.ˈjɔː] ‘Shemaiah’ (Neh. 10.9)
[wu∫.ˌmaˑʕ.ˈjɔː.huː] ‘and Shemaiahu’ (2 Chron. 35.9)
473This type of lengthening before a guttural followed by another weak consonant is found also across word boundaries, where the two words are connected by maqqef or where they are independent words, e.g.
[∫a.ˌmaˑʕ.-ˈnɔː] ‘listen! ’ (1 Sam. 28.22)
[lɔː.ˌ̟qaˑħ.-ˈloː] ‘he took him’ (Exod. 6.25)
[ˌdaˑʕ.-ˈlɔː.ɔχ] ‘know you! ’ (Job. 5.27)
[ˌqaˑḥ.-ˈlɔːɔχ] ‘take for yourself’ (Gen. 14.21)
[ha.ˈ∫ɔː.ˌmaˑʕ. ˈʕɔː.ɔm] ‘did any people hear?’ (Deut. 4.33)
474It is even marked occasionally on furtive pataḥ in such circumstances, e.g.
[li∫.ˈmoː.ˌaˑʕ-ˈloː] to listen to him’ (Jud. 19.25)
[ˈkʰoː.ˌaˑħ ˈleː.ev] ‘strength of heart’ (Job. 36.5)
475This type of gaʿya is found also before other sequences of weak consonants across syllables in word-internal position. These consonants include gutturals, sonorants, continuants, sibilants, fricatives, and qof, e.g.
[ˌ∫aˑv.ˈʕaː.aθ] ‘cry of’ (Jer. 8.19)
[ˌhaˑ∫.ˈħiː.iθ] ‘to destroy’ (Isa. 65.8)
[ˌħaˑs.ˈðeː] ‘love of’ (Isa. 55.3)
[ˌsaˑrˁ.ˈʁoː.on] ‘Sargon’ (Isa. 20.1)
[ˌkʰaˑð.ˈχoː.oð] ‘ruby’ (Isa. 54.12)
[ˌχaˑl.ˈneː] ‘Calneh’ (Amos 6.2)
[ˌʕaˑR̟.ˈvoː.oθ] ‘desert plains’ (Josh. 4.13)
476It is found also on high vowels, e.g.
[wuv.ˌsˁiˑ̟q.ˈlaː.aʁ] ‘and in Ziklag’ (Neh. 11.28)
[ˌmiˑ∫.ˈχuː] ‘pull out! ’ (Exod. 12.21)
[hɔː.ˌrˁiˑsˁ.ˈfɔː] ‘the pavement’ (2 Chron. 7.3)
[wu.va̟q.ˌbuˑq.ˈjɔː] ‘and Bakbukiah’ (Neh 12.9)
477The lengthening of the vowel is reflected by the Karaite transcriptions by an Arabic mater lectionis, although the gaʿya sign is not always marked in the manuscripts, e.g.
(BL Or 2556, fol. 65r, 1 | L [BHS]:
Neh. 10.9 ‘Shemaiah’)
(BL Or 2556, fol. 54v, 2 | L [BHS]:
Neh. 9.5 ‘Pethahiah’)
(BL Or 2552 fol. 7v, 4 | L [BHS]:
Job. 5.27 ‘know you! ’)
(BL Or 2552 fol. 47v, 1 | L [BHS]:
Job. 33.1 ‘hear please! ’)
(BL Or 2542, fol. 50r, 5 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 6.25 ‘he took him’)
(BL Or 2549 fol. 226v, 9 | L [BHS]:
Ezek. 16.8 ‘and I swore to you’)
(BL Or 2551 fol. 96r, 13 | L [BHS]:
ל ָּ ח ֶ ׃ם Psa. 132.15 ‘I will satisfy (with) bread’)
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 88v, 1 | L [BHS]:
Deut. 4.33 ‘did a people hear’)
(BL Or 2549 fol. 65v, 1 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 8.19 ‘cry of’)
(BL Or 2548 fol. 168r, 7 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 55.3 ‘love of’)
(BL Or 2548 fol. 164v, 11 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 54.12 ‘ruby’)
(BL Or 2556, fol. 79r, 9 | L [BHS]:
Neh. 12.9 ‘and Bakbukiah’)
(BL Or 2556, fol. 78r, 2 | L [BHS]:
Neh. 11.28 ‘and in Ziklag’)
478In some manuscripts, the mater lectionis is occasionally omitted in places where the gaʿya in L occurs on high vowels, e.g.
(BL Or 2542, fol. 58v, 7 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 12.21 ‘pull out! ’)
479This is analogous to the omission of a mater lectionis where minor gaʿya or shewa gaʿya occur on a high vowel. It indicates that the duration of the vowel lengthened by this type of phonetic gaʿya was less than that of a long bimoraic vowel in an open syllable and that high vowels were inherently shorter than low vowels. The vowel, therefore, should be represented as half-long in roman transcription, e.g. [aˑ], [iˑ], [uˑ], as is the case with the vowels with minor gaʿya or the vowels of shewa gaʿya.
480The shewa after this type of gaʿya was silent. This is shown by the representation of the silent shewa by Arabic sukūn in some of the Karaite transcriptions and by the fact that A regularly has a simple shewa sign rather than a ḥaṭef pataḥ. This should be contrasted with cases of phonetic gaʿya that augment the short vowel by an extra mora and cause the shewa to be vocalic by inducing a resyllabification (§I.2.5.8.), e.g.
L: [ha.θiː.ma.ˈloː.oχ] ‘Are you a king?’ (A
Jer. 22.15)
481In such cases, the vowel should be transcribed as fully long, viz. [aː], [iː], [uː].
The purpose of the phonetic gaʿya before a silent shewa in forms such as [ja.ˌ∫aˑʕ.ˈjɔː.huː] was orthoepic, just as was the case with the phonetic gaʿya before a vocalic shewa in a word such as
[ha.θiː.ma.ˈloː.oχ]. Both cases were a measure to avoid the slurring of the weak letters together in the reading. They were evidently felt to be vulnerable to such slurring due to the fact that they formed a suboptimal syllable contact. The optimal contact between two adjacent syllables is where the onset of the second syllable is stronger than the offset (coda) of the preceding syllable (Vennemann 1988, 40).
In forms such as [ja.ˌ∫aˑʕ.ˈjɔː.huː], the clash of two prominent syllables can be assumed to have induced a repair mechanism in the form of a short pause equivalent to a weak beat, in effect a metrical epenthetic or zero syllable. The foot and grid structure of this can be represented thus (the final syllable enclosed in angular brackets is extra-metrical):
482In some cases lengthening of the vowel before the weak consonants is represented in the Karaite transcriptions where a gaʿya is not marked in L. It regularly occurs, for example, in the word י ְׁ ש ַ ע ְ י ָּ ה ּ ו even where L does not have gaʿya on the shin, e.g.
(BL Or 2548 fol. 14r, 9 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 37.5 ‘Isaiah’)
483A minor gaʿya is marked on some constructions that have a phonetic gaʿya of this nature, e.g.
A: [ˌmaˑpˌpʰaˑħ∅ˈnɔːfƐ∫] ‘the breathing out of the soul’ (L [BHS]:
Job. 11.20)
L: [viˌjiˑ∫ˌmaˑʕ∅ˈjɔː] ‘and Ishmaiah’ (1 Chron. 12.4)
L: [vaɟˌɟiˑ̟qˌ̟qaˑħ∅ˈloː] ‘and he took for himself’ (Gen. 4.19)
484The lengthening is reflected in the Karaite transcriptions, e.g.
(BL Or 2552 fol. 16r, 5 | A
Job. 11.20)
(BL Or 2544, fol. 34r, 9 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 32.32 ‘and it rose for him’)
This indicates that the pattern of the constructions was prosodically equivalent to the regular structures of minor gaʿya. They may be compared, in particular, to the pattern In a structure such as
[viˌjiˑ∫ˌmaˑʕ∅ˈjɔː], therefore, the metrical epenthetic ∅ would correspond to the short ḥaṭef vowel of
This is evidence for the existence of the metrical epenthetic. Moreover, the equivalence of the two structures demonstrates that the duration of the pataḥ before the ḥaṭef in
and of the pataḥ with the phonetic gaʿya in
was equivalent, i.e. a half-long [aˑ].
485Metrical epenthesis between two weak consonants in the contact of two syllables can be identified as an orthoepic strategy in some forms of the verbs ה ָ י ָ ה ‘to be’ and ח ָ י ָ ה ‘to live’. This is achieved by lengthening the ḥireq of prefixes before he or ḥet and lengthening the pataḥ of the conjunctive prefix va- before yod, e.g.
[ˌjiˑhˈjƐː] ‘it will be’ (Gen. 1.29)
[ˌjiˑħˈjƐː] ‘he lives’ (Ecc. 6.3)
[ˌmiˑhˈjoːoθ] ‘from being’ (Jer. 31.35)
[ˌvaˑjˈhiː] ‘and it was’ (Gen. 4.3)
[ˌvaˑjˈħiː] ‘and he lived’ (Gen. 5.3)
486In the model Tiberian codices, the prefixes of these verbs are frequently, though not regularly, marked with a gaʿya sign. The marking of gaʿya differs across the manuscripts. In places where it is omitted in L and A, it is often marked in C. The Karaite transcriptions indicate that the vowel of the prefixes was regularly lengthened, including where it is omitted in L and A, e.g.
(BL Or 2549 fol. 87r, 6 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 23.17 ‘it (ms) will be’)
(BL Or 2549 fol. 55r, 14 | L [BHS],
Jer. 7.24 ‘and they were’)
(BL Or 2549 fol. 58r, 12 | L [BHS],
Jer. 7.34 ‘it (fs) will be’)
(BL Or 2549 fol. 92r, 12 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 31.35 ‘from being’)
(BL Or 2549 fol. 120r, 10 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 35.7 ‘you (mpl) will live’)
(BL Or 2540, fol. 3v, 4 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 1.5 ‘and it was’)
(BL Or 2548 fol. 28r, 9 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 38.9 ‘and he lived’)
487Since the Karaite transcriptions mark the vowels as long even where the model codices, even C, do not mark gaʿya, the lengthening of the vowel is not directly correlated with the marking of the gaʿya.
488When the prefix of the verb begins with a consonant other than yod, the pataḥ in the va- prefixed particle is not lengthened, since there was no contact of two weak consonants and metrical epenthesis was unnecessary, e.g.
[vattʰiˈhiː] ‘and it (fs) was’ (Jud. 11.29)
489This is shown by the fact that Karaite transcriptions regularly have no mater lectionis in such contexts, e.g.
(BL Or 2547 fol. 34R, 5 | L [BHS]:
Jud. 11.29 ‘and it (fs) was’)
490Some manuscripts of the Karaite transcriptions represent only the pataḥ of the forms ו ַ י ְ ה ִ י and ו ַ י ְ ח ִ י but not ḥireq in the prefixes of these verbs, reflecting the lengthening only of pataḥ, e.g. Or 2539 fols. 56–114:
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 71v, 6 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 24.15 ‘and it was’)
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 97r, 8 | L [BHS]:
Deut. 18.22 ‘he will be’)
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 103r, 4 | L [BHS]:
Deut. 20.11 ‘they will be’)
491Manuscripts such as Or 2539 fols. 56–114 that do not represent the ḥireq with mater lectionis mark long ḥireq in other contexts with a mater lectionis, e.g.
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 57r, 8 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 14.23 ‘from a thread’)
492This suggests that the ḥireq in the prefixes of these verbs was long, but was perceived to be shorter in duration than the pataḥ in prefixes of these verbs and shorter than long ḥireq in other contexts. This is reminiscent of the short vowels in closed syllables that were lengthened by minor gaʿya. These, likewise, were only half-long and exhibit a lesser duration when the vowel is a high vowel (§I.2.8.2.2.).
- 234 Data supplied by Shai Heijmans.
493I have presented evidence elsewhere (Khan 2018b) that the orthoepic measure of lengthening the vowels before two weak consonants in forms of the verbs ה ָ י ָ ה and ח ָ י ָ ה had deep historical roots that can be traced to the proto-Masoretic reading in Second Temple Palestine before the split of the Tiberian and Babylonian branches. It arose as a measure to ensure that the gutturals were not weakened in these verbs and thus to prevent them from being confounded. The argument, in brief, is that all initial he and initial ḥet verbs originally had an /i/ vowel in prefixes in the proto-Masoretic reading. This situation has been preserved in the Babylonian reading tradition, whereas in the Tiberian tradition the vowel generally underwent lowering to a segol or pataḥ (Yeivin 1985, 302), e.g.234
[tihdoːfuː] (L [BHS]:
Ezek. 34.21 ‘you will push’)
[yihroːʁuː] (l [BHS]:
Psa. 94.6 ‘they will kill’)
494The /i/ has been preserved in the verbs ה ָ י ָ ה and ח ָ י ָ ה in the Tiberian tradition because it was lengthened for orthoepic reasons. This must have taken place before the vowel lowering took place in initial he and ḥet verbs at a remote historical period when such verbs originally had /i/ in the prefixes before the Babylonian and Tiberian branches split.
495This demonstrates that orthoepy was already a feature of the ancient reading and that care over the oral reading of the text went hand in hand with care over the copying of the written text at an ancient period, presumably within Temple circles.
496Vowels lengthened before weak consonants for the purpose of orthoepic metrical epenthesis such as the constructions mentioned in this section, although not fully bimoraic vowels, appear to have been of a slightly longer duration than vowels in closed syllables lengthened by musical minor gaʿya. This is shown by the fact that there are manuscripts of Karaite transcriptions that transcribe the ḥireq or prefixes of the verbs ה ָ י ָ ה and ח ָ י ָ ה with an Arabic mater lectionis but omit the mater lectionis where a ḥireq has minor gaʿya, e.g.
(BL Or 2549 fol. 59r, 1 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 8.2 ‘they will be’)
(BL Or 2549 fol. 58v, 13 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 8.2 ‘they worshipped’)
497Likewise, there are some manuscripts that regularly transcribe a pataḥ lengthened in metrical epenthesis constructions by an Arabic mater lectionis, but sometimes omit a mater lectionis in the transcription of pataḥ with minor gaʿya, e.g.
(BL Or 2542, fol. 43r, 3 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 1.5 ‘and it was’)
(BL Or 2542, fol. 50r, 5 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 6.25 ‘he took for himself’)
ּ
(BL Or 2542, fol. 43r, 6 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 1.7 ‘and they swarmed’)
498The lengthening of the vowel before weak consonants in syllable contact in constructions with metrical epenthesis described in this section is occasionally extended by analogy to situations in which the vowel occurs before weak consonants but is not immediately followed by the syllable bearing the main stress. These often occur before maqqef, e.g.
[ʔaR̟ˌbaˑʕ-ʕƐsˈR̟eː] ‘fourteen’ (Gen. 31.41)
[ˌvaˑjhiː-ˈʕƐːR̟ev] ‘and it was evening’ (Gen. 1.5)
I.2.11. Maqqef
- 235 For a detailed description of the use of maqqef see Yeivin (1980, 228– 36) and the literature cite (...)
499The maqqef sign joins words that are read together as a group with a single main stress.235 The number of words joined in this way is most frequently two, e.g.
L: ‘the light’ (Gen. 1.4)
500There are some cases of three, or, sporadically, even four words joined together into a single main stress group, e.g.
L: ‘the heart of Pharaoh’ (Exod. 14.4)
L: ‘for every case of crime’ (Exod. 22.8)
501There are three main factors that condition the use of maqqef.
502(i) When there would be a clash of two main accents across two words, i.e. where one word has word-final stress and the following has word-initial stress, the stress of the first word is sometimes eliminated by joining it together with second by maqqef, e.g
L: ‘say with regard to me’ (Gen. 20.13)
L: ‘they were found among them’ (Jer. 41.8)
L: ‘the scroll of a book’ (Jer. 36.2)
503(ii) Small monosyllabic words are often attached to a following word even if there would not have been a clash of accents. This occurs particularly frequently when the short word has a short vowel in a closed syllable, e.g.
L: ‘to Abraham’ (Gen. 20.10)
L: ‘all the words’ (Exod. 4.30)
L: ‘son of the slave woman’ (Gen. 21.10)
504(iii) Maqqef that does not fall into one of the two previous categories may be motivated by the constraints of the musical accent system. This is the case where a particular disjunctive can be preceded only by a limited number of conjunctive accents. In the following extract, for example, the ṭifḥa can only be preceded by one conjunctive, so the two preceding words are joined together in a single accent group by maqqef:
L: ‘but if it seems wrong in your eyes to come with me to Babylon, desist.’ (Jer. 40.4)
505As remarked, a maqqef after a word, in principle, deprives the word of its main stress. As a result, vowels that do not have an inherent length feature are pronounced short when they are left unstressed, e.g.
כ ֹּ֫ ל /kʰol/ [ˈkʰoːol], כ ָּ ־ל /kʰol/ [kʰɔl] ‘all’
ע ֹ֫ ז /ʕoz/ [ˈʕoːoz], ע ָ ־ז /ʕoz/ [ʕɔz] ‘strength’ (Isa. 26.1)
/tʰim∫ol/ [tʰimˈ∫oːol] (Gen. 37.8),
/tʰim∫ol/ [tʰim∫ɔl] (Gen. 4.7) ‘you master’
א ֵ֫ ת /ʔeθ/ [ˈʔeːeθ], א ֶ ־ת /ʔeθ/ [ʔƐθ] object marker
/vajjittʰen/ [vaɟɟitˈtʰeːen],
/vajjittʰen/ [vaɟɟittʰƐn] ‘and he gave’
506Vowels with an inherent length feature do not in principle undergo such shortening in words followed by maqqef, e.g.
L: /bēθ/ [beːeθ] ‘your father’s house’ (Gen. 24.23)
L: /ʔī∫/ [ʔiːi∫] ‘one man’ (Gen. 42.11)
L: /∫lō∫/ [∫aloːo∫] ‘three hundred’ (Num. 31.36)
507On some sporadic occasions, an inherently long ḥolem in a closed syllable in a word with maqqef is shortened to short qameṣ, e.g.
L: ‘if these three’ (Exod. 21.11)
508On a number of occasions, the Karaite transcriptions omit a mater lectionis in their representation of inherently long ḥolem, qameṣ or ṣere in closed syllables in words with maqqef, which reflects a wider range of shortening of inherently long vowels than is represented by the Masoretic vocalization, e.g.
(BL Or 2549 fol. 145v, 15 | L [BHS]:
Ezek. 4.5 ‘three hundred’)
(Genizah MS 13, Khan 1990a, 13 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 111.3 ‘majesty’)
(Genizah MS 13, Khan 1990a, 13 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 112.3 ‘wealth’)
(Or. 2546, fol. 118v, 5 | L [BHS]:
Num. 34.11 ‘sea of Chinnereth’)
(BL Or 2540, fol. 20v, 7 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 7.22 ‘the heart of Pharaoh’)
(BL Or 2540, fol. 17r, 2 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 6.14 ‘the house of their fathers’)
509In contrast to these indicators of prosodic reduction due to lack of stress, there are some features of words with maqqef that reflect an effort to pronounce such words with some degree of prosodic independence.
510In some cases, for example, an intrinsically short /o/ vowel in a word with maqqef is represented by ḥolem [oː] rather than the expected short qameṣ [ɔ]. In the following two examples, the syllable with the ḥolem is marked by a gaʿya, reflecting a secondary stress:
L: ‘a man steals’ (Exod. 21.37)
L: ‘strength to them’ (Psa. 28.8)
L: ‘the multitude of her sins’ (Lam. 1.5)
511Compound numerals with elements joined by maqqef generally reflect a secondary stress on the first element before the maqqef, either by a gaʿya or by a long realization of an intrinsically short vowel, e.g.
L: ‘fourteen’ (Gen. 14.4)
L: ‘seventeen’ (Gen. 37.2)
L: ‘and sixteen’ (2 Kings 15.33)
- 236 E.g. Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan, 1967, §§6-8), Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. (...)
The Masoretic treatises discuss the distribution of monosyllabic words with the intrinsically short vowels /e/ and /o/, which, in principle, are realized as the long vowels ṣere [eː] and ḥolem [oː] respectively when stressed and the short vowels segol [Ɛ] and qameṣ [ɔ] when in words with maqqef, e.g.236 The sources point out, however, that these vowels have a long realization in a word with maqqef when they are separated from the main accent by at least one intervening syllable, e.g.
L: ‘six (measures) of barley’ (Ruth 3.17)
L: ‘a crag of rock’ (1 Sam. 14.4)
L: ‘a robber son’ (Ezek. 18.10)
L: ‘everything that is high’ (Job 41.26)
512This, likewise, may have been conditioned by secondary stress, although a gaʿya is not marked on the syllable in all these cases in L, A and C.
513Conversely, forms of these words with segol or qameṣ occasionally take an accent (§I.2.3.2.), e.g.
L: (Esther 2.5) ‘son of Yair’
L: (Psa. 60.2) ‘with Aram-naharaim’
L: (Prov. 19.7) ‘all the brothers of a poor man’
These may have arisen by a process of giving greater prosodic independence to a word that was originally unstressed. There are, indeed, some variants in the sources. According to Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan, 1967, §8), for example, the word כ ָּ ל in Psa. 87.7 has its own accent but in L it has a maqqef ( ‘all my springs’).
514The lists of differences in Kitāb al-Khilaf, moreover, show that Ben Naftali in a number cases read a word with a conjunctive accent where Ben Asher read it with maqqef (A. Ben-David 1957b, 391–92), e.g.
515Lev. 24.16:
Ben Asher:
Ben Naftali:
‘when he blasphemes the Name’
516Gen. 39.6:
Ben Asher:
Ben Naftali:
‘beautiful in form’
517Job 12.3:
Ben Asher:
Ben Naftali:
‘with whom is not?’
- 237 In the manuscript II Firkovitch Evr. II B 159 (referred to as L2 by Yeivin 1980, 23) the maqqef si (...)
518This is a reflection of the general tendency of Ben Naftali to introduce a greater number of orthoepic innovations into the reading than Ben Asher, who was usually more conservative.237
519In some cases, there are variations between the qere and the ketiv of a word with maqqef, e.g.
Josh. 9.7: ketiv
qere
‘I make (a covenant) for you’
Hosea 8.12: ketiv
qere
‘I write for him’
520In such cases, the ketiv with mater lectionis vav reflects a reading with greater prosodic independence that the qere.
521In the early manuscripts, when a word with maqqef ends in an open syllable and the subsequent word has the stress on its initial syllable, the final open syllable of the first word often has a gaʿya (Yeivin 1968, 165; 1980, 250), e.g.
L: (Jer. 17.4) ‘for fire’
A: (Nah. 2.4) ‘men of strength’
The occurrence of secondary stress on the syllable immediately adjacent to the main stress implies that the two words were separated somewhat, since otherwise there would be a clash of prominent accent syllables. The metrical structure of a phrase such as therefore, may be represented as follows:
[(ˌkʰiː) (∅) (ˈʔeːe∫)]
A metrical epenthesis of an intervening interval between the two prominent syllables can be assumed to have occurred. This is analogous to the analysis of the metrical structure of words such as [jaˌ∫aˑʕ∅ˈjɔːhuː], in which metrical epenthesis makes a clear division between weak consonants (§I.2.10.).
522In the discussion of deḥiq above in §I.2.8.1.2. we have seen that the vowel in a final open syllable in a word with maqqef is given sufficient duration to be represented by the Karaite transcriptions with a mater lectionis. This applies even to the pataḥ in constructions with the interrogative word המ , which must have been short at some earlier period, e.g.
L: [maˑ-ˈllɔːɔχ] (Gen. 21.17) ‘What [is] to you (fs)’
523This was a strategy of making a clear division prosodically between the orthographically separate word with maqqef and the word following it. Another strategy to achieve the same purpose that is reflected by some of the Karaite transcriptions was to glottalize the offset of the pataḥ vowel of המ . This is represented by an Arabic hāʾ, e.g.
[mah-∫∫aˈmƐːχɔː] (BL Or 2544 fol. 33v, 1 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 32.28 ‘What is your name?’)
[mah-∫∫aˈmoː] (BL Or 2544 fol. 76v, 12 | L [BHS]:
Exod. 3.13 ‘What is his name?’)
[mah-ˈzzƐː] (BL Or 2544 fol. 79v, 8 | L [BHS]: ketiv
qere
Exod. 4.2 ‘What is this?’)
[mah-ttʰɔːˈʕiːR̟uː ˌwuˑmah-ttʰoʕoːR̟aˈR̟uː] (BL Or 2554 fol. 86v, 11 | L [BHS]:
Cant. 8.4 ‘What do you stir up and what do you awaken?’)
[mah-∫ˌ∫Ɛːhɔːˈhɔː] (BL Or 2555 fol. 12v, 1 | L
[BHS]:
Ecc. 3.15 ‘that which was’)
- 238 See, for example, Vayra (1994) for this function of glottalization in Italian and Khan (2016b vol. (...)
524Such glottalization involves the devoicing of the offset of the vowel, which is a cross-linguistically attested device for marking divisions between prosodic words.238
525Glottalization of final vowels as a strategy to separate words joined by maqqef is attested in other contexts in the Karaite transcriptions, e.g.
[ni̟qˌR̟ɔˑh-∫aˈmiː] (Genizah MS 14, Khan 1990a, 2r, 8 | L [BHS]:
Jer. 32.34 ‘My name is called’)
- 239 Birkeland (1940, 31–45), Roman (1983, 494–501).
- 240 Nöldeke et al. (1938, vol. 3, 199), Ibn Khālawayh (ed. Bergsträsser, 1934, 109).
Evidence for glottalization of word-final vowels can also be found in the use of the dagesh sign in some manuscripts with Palestinian vocalization, e.g. (Revell 1970a, 21). The use of the element [h] as a pausal device is reminiscent of the Arabic hāʾu al-sakt, which was used to preserve a final short vowel from being elided in pause, especially in the recitation of poetry.239 A number of instances of it occur in the Qurʾānic reading tradition of Ibn Kathīr.240
I.2.12. Further Cases of Second Accents in a Word on Closed Syllables with Short Vowels
526In some cases, a word contains an accent sign on a closed syllable before the accent marking the main stress.
527We have seen (§I.2.5.8.5.) that merkha often occurs in the three books on closed syllables containing short vowels with the function of a phonetic gaʿya in order to lengthen the vowel and cause the following shewa to be read as vocalic, e.g.
L: ‘you choose’ (A:
Psa. 65.5)
L: ‘it mocks’ (A:
Prov. 30.17)
528Under certain conditions (Yeivin 1980, 185) a zaqef accent is preceded in the same word by a metiga accent on a closed syllable with a short vowel that is separated from the main zaqef accent by another syllable, e.g.
L: ‘and on the plunder’ (Esther 9.10)
L: ‘at the end of them’ (Dan. 1.5)
529The Karaite transcriptions do not represent the vowel of the syllable with metiga with an Arabic mater lectionis, e.g.
(BL Or 2548 fol. 128r, 5 | L [BHS]:
Isa. 48.21 ‘and he cleaved the rock’)
(BL Or 2556, fol. 2v, 5 | L [BHS]:
Dan. 1.5 ‘at the end of them’)
(BL Or 2539 MS A, fol. 70v, 4 | L [BHS]:
Gen. 24.7 ‘unto your seed’)
530The same applies to accents on short vowels in closed syllables before the main stress in the three books, such as the first accent of the composite reviaʿ mugrash. Transcriptions such as the following show that the vowel was not lengthened by the first accent:
(BL Or 2551, fol. 31r, 3 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 78.49 ‘delegation’)
531This suggests that metiga and the first element of composite accents in the three books did not represent a secondary stress beat, but rather some musical phenomenon that did not result in the lengthening of the vowel.
Notes
1 For examples in early Karaite grammatical texts (Khan 2000a, 28).
2 For the sources see Steiner (2009).
3 Eldar (1994, 123–24)
4 In Jewish Palestinian Aramaic the verb קמץ is used in the sense of ‘closing (eye, mouth), e.g. דיַקמיץַחדאַופתחַחדא ‘because (the sleeping deer) opens one (eye) and closes the other’ (Palestinian Talmud, Shabbat 14b) (Sokoloff 1992, 496).
5 Dotan (2007, 634).
6 For details see Steiner (2009).
7 For details see Eldar (1983).
8 , long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.15.3.; Eldar (1994, 130).
9 (Dotan 1997, 445)
10 long version , edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.15.2.; Eldar (1994, 130).
11 (Dotan 1997, 445).
12 For this interpretation see Eldar (1983, 47).
13 Data supplied by Aaron Hornkohl.
14 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
15 Yuditsky compares σϕωθαϊ to forms like בשפאותיכה and שפות in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Yuditsky 2017).
16 See §I.1.20 and Ben-Ḥayyim (1946, 194–96), Kutscher (1979, 496– 97) and Mishor (1998).
17 Bacher (1974, 15), Steiner (2005b, 374, 377–78), Posegay (2020).
18 Baer and Strack (1879, §10), Dotan (2007, 634). The attribute qaṭan ‘small’ reflects the concept that the [ɛ] and [e] qualities were in some way more attenuated and more closed than the [a] and [ɔ] qualities respectively. This theory of vowels can be traced back to Syriac grammatical sources where the Syriac term qaṭṭīn ‘narrow’ is used to describe the higher front vowels (Posegay 2020). An Arabic version of this terminology is found in the Masoretic treatise Kitāb al-Muṣawwitāt (ed. Allony 1963, 140–42): al-qamṣa al-kabīra ‘big qameṣ’ (= qameṣ), al-qamṣa al-ṣaghīra ‘small qameṣ’ (= ṣere), al-patḥa al-kabīra ‘big pataḥ’ (= pataḥ), al-patḥa al-ṣaghīra ‘small pataḥ’ (= segol).
19 E.g. Allony and Yeivin eds. (1985, 96).
20 Dotan (1997, 113; 2007, 634).
21 Short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.6.0.
22 E.g. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.17.
23 E.g. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.1.7.8.; short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.6.0.
24 Eldar (1994, 124).
25 Steiner (2009, 496). For other vocalizations of the vowels see Dotan (2007, 634).
26 Cf. Dotan (2007, 634), e.g. Baer and Strack (1879, 34–36), the treatise on the shewa published by Levy (1936), the Masoretic fragments published by Mann (1969, 2: 44), the Diqduq of Ibn Nūḥ (ed. Khan 2000, 28).
27 , long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.15.4., Eldar (1994, 132).
28 , short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.7.0, Eldar (1994, 131).
29 (Dotan1997, 445).
30 This interpretation of is in the Yemenite redaction of Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ known as the Arabic Maḥberet ha-Tījān (J. Derenbourg 1871, 16; Eldar 1994, 123).
31 long version , edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.15.5.
32 , long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.15.6.; Eldar (1994, 132).
33 (Dotan 1997, 445–47). A similar description of ḥireq is given by Dunash ibn Tamīm in his commentary on Sefer Yeṣira:
‘They articulate it with the tip of the tongue with the help of (= in conjunction with) the incisors’ (Grossberg 1902, 20–21; Eldar 1994, 133).
34 E.g. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.1.7.8. For other sources see Ben Yehuda (1980, vol. 4, 1783), Dotan (2007, 634).
35 E.g. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.6.0, MS S18, fol. 7r. MS S14, fol. 3r.
36 Haupt (1901, 15) proposes that the name is related etymologically to Arabic kharq ‘rent, fissure’ (cf. Rabbinic Hebrew ‘to cut a gap’) referring to the narrow opening of the lips.
37 Dotan (2007, 634), Khan (2000, 28).
38 , short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.6.0, Eldar (1994, 120). Cf. the Hebrew root חלם ‘to be healthy (i.e. whole in health)’.
39 ibid.
40 Bacher (1974, 16), Dotan (2007, 634), Eldar (1994, 121, 125).
41 Ben Yehuda (1980, vol. 3, 1466-67). The manuscript of Saadya’s grammar book has (Dotan 1997, 447). This vocalization is also found in the Genizah fragment of a Masoretic treatise CUL T-S NS 301.69.
42 Dotan (2007, 634), Khan (2000, 28).
43 , long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.15.1.; (Eldar 1994, 129).
44 , long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.15.1.; Eldar (1994, 129).
45 (Dotan 1997,445).
46 long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.14.; Eldar (1994, 125).
47 In some manuscripts with Non-standard Tiberian vocalization the sign is written reversed, with the three dots sloping up from left-to-right; see Outhwaite (2020).
48 E.g. long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.1.6. This term is also used by the author of the Treatise on the Shewa (ed. Levy 1936, ).
49 Joseph Qimḥi, Sefer Zikkaron (ed. Bacher 1888, 17), Bacher (1974, 17).
50 Dotan (2007, 634).
51 long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.15.7.; Eldar (1994, 133).
52 (Dotan 1997, 447).
53 The text was published by Razhaby (1983).
54 Eldar (1983), Dotan (1997, 113–14).
55 Dotan notes that the terms al-khafḍ al-ʾaṣghar and al-khafḍ al-ʾakbar appear to be referring to a reference point in the middle of the mouth, from which ḥireq would constitute a greater lowering than ṣere. The other terms have a reference point at the top of the mouth.
56 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.3.– §II.L.2.8.
57 Cf. Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb (ed. H. Derenbourg 1889, 452–53).
58 See Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.4.2.
59 Eldar (1994, 102–5).
60 In Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, for example, it is stated that the pronunciation of the stressed pataḥ in words such as and
‘indicates the existence of ʾalef’ (short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.4.0), i.e. it is pronounced long with a hidden vowel letter. For further references see Hommel (1917, 99f.), Ben-David (1957a, 21–23), Yeivin (1981b, 42); also the Masoretic note to Lev. 1.11 quoted by Wickes (1887, 25):
‘8 instances in Leviticus lengthen the particle
with an accent’. Lengthening of vowels in open unstressed syllables is alluded to by Saadya in his commentary on Sefer Yeṣira (ed. Lambert 1891, 76– 77; 1889, 125).
61 The distinction between long and short qameṣ is expressed by the terms qameṣ gadol and qameṣ ḥaṭef in the works of the early Hebrew grammarians of Spain (Lambert 1889, 124).
62 For an alternative analysis of the phonemes of Tiberian Hebrew based on the phonetic realizations I have reconstructed from medieval sources see Suchard (2018). For phonemic analyses based on earlier views of the phonetic realization of the vowels see, for example, Morag (1962) and Schramm (1964, 63).
63 The second vowel in segolates is epenthetic and does not appear in the underlying phonological form; see §I.2.6.
64 These are listed in Masoretic treatises, e.g. Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, sections 6-8), Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.3.2.5., §II.L.3.2.6. The sources differ regarding the number of cases of with a main stress. Psa. 87.7, which is one of the three cases cited in Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim, has a maqqef in L [BHS]:
(Psa. 87.7 ‘all my springs’).
65 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
66 The splitting of a long vowel into two syllable nuclei is a phenomenon that is attested in the Samaritan reading tradition, e.g. rēʾoš ‘head’ (= Tiberian ), which, according to Ben-ḥayyim (2000, 67), developed from *rōoš with the first nucleus dissimilating.
67 J. McCarthy (1979, 155) also proposed that such syllables were feet containing ‘two rhyme nodes’, though he did not identify an epenthetic in his framework of analysis.
68 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
69 Yuditsky (2017, 153–54) and Brønno (1943, 260) argue that the short vowel is because the form is in construct with what follows. Such an explanation, however, is not totally satisfactory because other nominal forms with final η in the Hexapla transcription do not necessarily shorten in construct (Ben Kantor, personal communication).
70 See the sources cited by Roman (1983, 720–21).
71 See Roman (1983, 722-23).
72 Roman (1983, 723).
73 For the hamza bayna bayna see Roman (1983, 333).
74 Kitāb Jāmiʿ al-ʾAlfāẓ, ed. Skoss (1936, vol. 2, 451-452): .See §I.1.6. for further details.
75 75 CUL T-S NS 301.32:
76 Epstein (1950), Morag (1952, 236).
77 Morag (1959, 233), Katz (1977, 87), Bauer and Leander (1922, 112– 13).
78 Various other terms are used in the early sources to refer to the shewa sign, such as the Arabic terms nuqṭaṭayn qāʾimatayn ‘two dots standing upright’ and jazm ‘cutting off’, both found in the works of Saadya. Moreover in some sources the word shewa is spelt with a bet For details see Dotan (1953), Allony (1973, 105, n.165). In the early medieval sources a terminological distinction was made between shewa and the vowels, the latter being referred to by Hebrew terms such as
‘kings’,
‘signs’,
‘melodies’,
‘movements’ or Arabic terms such as mulūk ‘kings’, naghamāt ‘melodies’, muṣawwitāt ‘sounding forms’, ḥarakāt ‘movements’ and ʾanḥāʾ ‘inflections’. See, for example, Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.1., also Allony (1963), Posegay (2020).
79 See, for example, Crosswhite (2000; 2001; 2004).
80 E.g. in the unstressed syllables of Belarussian: ˈkol ‘pole’ > kaˈla ‘pole’ (genitive); ˈ∫ept ‘whisper’ > ∫apˈtatsʲ ‘to whisper’. This phenomenon is discussed in the context of Tiberian Hebrew by Himmelreich (2019), although he does not apply it to the vocalic shewa.
81 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
82 Data supplied by Shai Heijmans.
83 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.1, short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.5.1. Some Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts substitute a vowel sign for the shewa in such contexts, explicitly marking the assimilation in quality, e.g. (T-S AS 68.100 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 119.76 ‘according to your promise’),
(T-S AS 68.100 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 119.80 ‘let my heart be’),
(T-S AS 68.100 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 119.88 ‘and I will keep’),
(T-S AS 68.100 | L [BHS]:
Psa. 119.92 ‘in my affliction’) (Outhwaite 2020).
84 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.5.2. Saadya, Kutub al-Lugha (ed. Dotan 1997, 468–72). Treatise on the Shewa (CUL Or 1080.13.3.2, fol. 2v.). Some Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts explicitly mark this pronunciation before yod by vocalizing with a ḥireq, e.g. (T-S AS 44.35 | L [BHS]:
Lam. 3.57 ‘on the day’) (Outhwaite 2020).
85 For this type of vocalization in Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts see Ginsburg (1897, 578), Kahle (1930, 58*), Morag (1959, 233–34), Blapp (2017, 40-41, 76, 204).
86 There are five cases of this sign in A; cf. Yeivin (1968, 21). Ḥaṭef ḥireq is attested also in some manuscripts with Non-Standard Tiberian vocalization.
87 Kahle (1930, 58*), Díez Macho (1963, 37) and Blapp (2017, 79).
88 , ed. Levy .(1936, כה). The lacunae in Levy’s text can now be supplied from the Geniza manuscript, CUL Or 1080.13.3.2, fol. 2v; cf. Yeivin (1981, 46), Eldar (1988, 127).
89 The data for this and the following two examples were supplied by Estara Arrant.
90 Yeivin (1968, 18), Dotan (1985).
91 Baer and Strack (1879, 31); cf. Ben-David (1957a, 14–15).
92 For further details see Yeivin (1985, 364–69) and the summaries in Khan (2013f) and Heijmans (2016).
93 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.10.3.
94 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.4.2.:
95 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.4.2.:
96 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.7.:
97 E.g. CUL T-S NS 301.84.
98 Even though he was unaware of the medieval sources described here, J. McCarthy (1979, 162) recognized that the vowel of shewa was not shorter in quantity than other short vowels but rather was prosodically weak due to its being bound to the following vowel in a foot.
99 For the typology of feet in iambic metrical systems see Hayes (1985; 1995), Kager (1993, 383; 2007, 200–201).
100 For hierarchical arrangement of linguistic rhythm on a grid see, for example, Liberman and Prince (1977), Hayes (1995, 26–31) and Halle and Vergnaud (1987). In a study of the metrical phonology of Tiberian Hebrew, Hovav (1984, 87–211) argues for the need to combine foot structures with grids.
101 Such underlying representations without the epenthetic vowel are adopted in analyses of Tiberian Hebrew made within the framework of generative phonology and optimality theory, e.g. Prince (1975), Greenstein (1992), Malone (1993), Coetzee (1999), Edzard (2013).
102 Cf. the Treatise on the Shewa and the other sources discussed by Levy (1936, 31–33), also Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.5, and an anonymous Masoretic treatise CUL T-S NS 301.21.
103 Long version, MS II Firkovitch, Evr.-Arab II 418, fols. 21r–21v.
104 II Firkovitch, Evr.-Arab II 365, fol. 6r: .
105 For this phenomenon after guttural consonants see §I.2.5.4. below.
106 II Firkovitch, Evr.-Arab. II 365, fol. 21r.
107 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
108 Cf. Hall (2011, 1577–78), who discusses this function of epenthesis in languages.
109 A clash is the occurrence of two adjacent metrically strong elements with the same prominence. A lapse is the occurrence of two adjacent metrically weak elements; cf. Prince (1983), Selkirk (1984).
110 For extrametrical syllables at the right periphery of words see Kager (2007, 204).
111 According to J. McCarthy (1979, 164) the ḥaṭef vowel on a guttural is bound prosodically with the preceding syllable rather than the following syllable. The descriptions in the medieval sources and the process described here constitute counterevidence to such an analysis.
112 Also in early manuscripts of Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible the Tetragrammaton is written in Hebrew script, in some cases even in the early type of script (Roberts 1951, 173–174).
113 Some manuscripts with Babylonian vocalization represent the initial vowel of the qere on the Tetragrammaton (Yeivin 1985, 912).
114 Data supplied by Shai Heijmans.
115 Compare the remarks of David Qimḥi (Sefer Mikhlol, ed. Rittenberg, 1862, 138b): ‘Likewise with ḥaṭef qameṣ, as in “and from rebuking you” (Isa. 54.9), the reading of the [vowel on] the gimel is similar to ḥaṭef qameṣ on account of the ʿayin. There are accurately vocalized codices in which the gimel is vocalized with ḥaṭef qameṣ.’
116 The evidence for this in the various medieval sources is discussed in Khan (1987, 54–55).
117 J. McCarthy (1979, 157) also proposed that such word-internal syllables were feet containing ‘two rhyme nodes’, though he did not identify an epenthetic in his framework of analysis.
118 Data supplied by Shai Heijmans.
119 Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan, 1967, §5), Saadya, Kutub al-Lugha (ed. Dotan 1997, 466–67). Treatise on the Shewa (ed. Levy 1936, טז-יז).
120 Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan, 1967, §5), the Treatise on the Shewa (ed. Levy, 1936, טז).
121 This is contrary to the claim of Dotan in his notes to his edition of Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (1967, vol. 2, 192) that the shewa was silent in all these cases.
123 For this rule see Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, §21), Treatise on the Shewa (ed. Levy, 1936, כט-ל).
124 According to Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan, 1967, §21) the only exception in the Bible is the Aramaic form ‘I blessed’ (Daniel 4.31), in which the accent falls on the syllable beginning with the kaf but the shewa is silent.
125 The manuscript in the I Firkovitch collection labelled L17 by Yeivin (1968) has recently been identified by Phillips (2017) as being written by Samuel ben Jacob. See Phillips (2020) for a study of distribution of ḥaṭef pataḥ in L, L17 and other manuscripts attributed to Samuel ben Jacob.
126 This is confirmed by Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, which states that ‘has two accents and the shewa is vocalic’ (Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.3.2.7.).
127 Baer and Strack (ed. 1879, §52), Kitāb al-Khilaf (ed. Lipschütz 1965, 17).
128 Kitāb al-Khilaf (ed. Lipschütz 1965, 17, מה ,ַג).
129 Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, §22), Treatise on the Shewa (ed. Levy, 1936, ל).
130 Cf. Phillips (2020), who notes that simple shewa is marked in these forms in the extant portions of other manuscripts written by Samuel ben Jacob, the scribe of L.
131 Kitāb al-Khilaf (ed. Lipschütz 1965, 17, ג). Phillips (2020) suggests that the frequent lack of ḥaṭef pataḥ in this verb in L where Ben Asher read the shewa as vocalic may reflect that the scribe of L intended the vocalization to reflect a tradition corresponding to that of Ben Naftali.
132 Dotan (1967, 276), Phillips (2020).
133 In BHS the word is vocalized according to the vocalization of the first hand in the manuscript.
134 In BHS the word is vocalized according to the vocalization of the first hand in the manuscript.
135 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.13.1.
136 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.13.1.
137 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.13.1.
138 A similar list is cited in the treatise on the shewa (ed. Levy 1936, כט).
139 Yeivin (1980, 244–245). For more details concerning the minor gaʿya see §I.2.8.2.2.
140 The Treatise on the Shewa in the Genizah manuscript CUL Or 1080.13.3.2, fol. 2r; cf. Yeivin (1968, 27).
141 Named the Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus in the facsimile edition by Strack (1876).
142 See the discussion concerning the lack of phonetic gaʿya in such forms in Phillips (2020).
143 See Heijmans (2018, 99).
144 Cf. Heijmans (2018, 102).
145 Ed. Lipschütz (1965, ז).
146 Cf. Heijmans (2018, 103–4).
147 Cf. Heijmans (2018, 102).
148 Dotan (1967, 258, 374), Ibn Nūḥ, Diqduq (ed. Khan 2000b, 36).
149 Yeivin (1980, 247).
150 Ed. Lipschütz (1965, יב ,ה).
151 Ed. Lipschütz (1965, לה).
152 Ed. Lipschütz (1965, נ).
153 Forms such ‘and I remained’ (Ezek. 9.8) and
‘when you find’ (Gen. 32.20), in which, it seems, an original contact between two weak consonants has been split, may be related to this phenomenon.
154 Ed. Levy (1936, כה).
155 This formulation of the rule is cited in the Treatise on the Shewa (ed. Levy, 1936, יד). When discussing one of the examples, moreover, al-Fāsī uses the term merkha; cf. Jāmiʿ al-ʾAlfāẓ (ed. Skoss 1936, vol. 2, 684), which, he states, brings about ‘a strengthening of the accents’ (
156 The term גרש and the verbal root גר׳׳ש is used elsewhere in Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim as a generic term to refer to the main accent, e.g. §6, line 6 (ed. Dotan, 1967).
157 A later version of the passage, which Dotan adopts as his preferred text, refers to gaʿya: ‘Every word that occurs made long with a softening (of vocalic shewa?) and stressed with gaʿya is extended by pataḥ’. This version cannot easily be accommodated with the exceptions to the rule listed at the end of the passage. It appears to have arisen due to the fact that many scribes, such as Jacob ben Samuel in L, marked gaʿya rather than merkha in such words.
158 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ states that in some codices gaʿya is written slanting either to the right or to the left (Eldar 2018, 76-77). This would result in signs resembling the shapes of ṭifḥa and merkha respectively. See also short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.9.0. Moreover, gaʿya is sometimes referred to as maʾarikh in some sources (Wickes 1887, 24; Ben-David 1957b, 390–91). Given the exclusion of the forms (Psa. 119.167) and
(Job 10.12) from the list of exceptions to the rule discussed by Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim, however, it appears that the discussion concerns the accent merkha.
159 Ed. Lipschütz (1965, לה).
160 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.14.; short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.5.12; and earlier Masoretic treatises, e.g. Allony and Yeivin eds. (1985, 92– 93)
161 Cf. Chomsky (1952, 16–17).
162 Shashar (1983, 22), Ofer (1989, 318; 1993, 113–14).
163 163 (ed. Levy. 1936,
and CUL Or 1080.13.3.2, fol. 2r).
164 For this argument see Ofer (1993, 115-117).
165 Cf. Shashar (1983, 22).
166 Cf. Yeivin (1968, 370).
167 For this manuscript and the correction work of Mishaʾel ben ʿUzziʾel see Penkower (1989). For the erasure of the shewa signs see Ofer (1993, 116).
168 In L the shewa is omitted in ָּאֹ֑ת (Ruth 3.9).
169 Some reference grammars, such as Bergsträsser (1918, 141), Bauer and Leander (1922, 219–20), erroneously claim that the final tav of the independent 2fs pronoun was geminated by analogy with the 2ms independent pronoun The analogy, however, was with the 2fs verbal suffix, which was not geminated.
170 Cf. Ofer (1993).
171 David Qimḥi, Mikhlol (ed. Rittenberg, 1862, 139b), Chomsky (1952, 17):
172 Eldar (1975, 195; 1978, 68–69), Bar-Asher (1980, 48).
173 Eldar (1978, 69), Beit-Arié (1965, 38).
174 Eldar (1975, 195), Bar-Asher (1980, 48). These three types of double vocalization of vowels marked by matres lectionis are also found in medieval Judaeo-Arabic texts that are vocalized with Tiberian vowel signs, see Khan (1992a).
175 Such underlying representations without the epenthetic vowel are adopted in analyses of Tiberian Hebrew made within the framework of generative phonology and optimality theory, e.g. Prince (1975), Greenstein (1992), Malone (1993), Coetzee (1999), Edzard (2013).
176 For example, Delattre and Hohenberg (2009).
177 Yeivin (1968, 35), Shashar (1983, 21).
178 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.2.12.6.
179 See the commentary on Sefer Yeṣira by Saadya Gaon (ed. Lambert 1891, 79) and the sources cited in Khan (1995, 70–71).
180 Bacher (ed.) (1888, 17): The Qimḥis classified the Hebrew vowels into ‘big’ vowels and ‘small’ vowels according to their quantity. The ‘big’ vowels were ṣere, ḥolem and long qameṣ, shureq, and ḥireq. The ‘small’ vowels were pataḥ, segol, qameṣ ḥaṭuf, short ḥireq and qibbuṣ.
181 Ed. Rittenberg (1862, 137b–138a):
182 E.g. Saadya’s commentary on Sefer Yeṣira (ed. Lambert 1891, 76–77).
183 The concept of lengthening vs. non-lengthening/shortening in this passage and also in the extracts from the Qimḥis corresponds to the use of the terms madd and qaṣr in the Arabic tajwīd literature to denote ‘extra length’ and ‘normal length’ respectively, cf. Bravmann (1934, 76).
184 Phonetic studies of other languages have shown that, all other things being equal, unstressed lax vowels are shorter than unstressed tense vowels; cf., for example, Delattre and Hohenberg (2009).
185 For further details concerning deḥiq see Yeivin (1980, 292–93).
186 , Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.1.7.4.
187 , Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.1.7.4.
188 Bod. Heb. d 33, fol. 16: ‘the letter under which the segol occurs is shortened’.
189 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.1.7.5.
190 E.g. the treatise published by Baer and Strack (1879, §29). See the remarks of Dotan (1969).
191 For details of the occurrence of the gaʿya after the stress see Yeivin (1968, 188–91).
192 A parallel to such a process of compensatory gemination of a word-initial consonant is the so-called raddoppiamento sintattico in spoken Italian, e.g. città bellissima [t͡∫itˈta‿bbelˈlissima] ‘beautiful city’ (Nespor and Vogel 2012, 165–74). A parallel to the restriction of compensatory gemination to consonants following lax vowels is found in Neo-Mandaic (Häberl 2009, 76).
193 Data supplied by Shai Heijmans.
194 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
195 Constructions with followed by dagesh are considered to be ʾathe me-raḥiq in the Masoretic treatise published in Baer and Strack (1879, §29).
196 Data supplied by Ben Kantor.
197 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.1.7.4.
198 For more details concerning the minor gaʿya see Yeivin (1980, 244– 245).
199 The practice of speakers of a language to lengthen the final word in a syntactic phrase has been discussed in several places in the literature on phonetics, e.g. O’Connor (1973, 256–60), Klatt (1975; 1976), Wightman (1992), Berkovits (1993; 1994, referring to Modern Hebrew), Turk and Shattuck-Hufnagel (2007), Gabriel and Lleó (2011). It functions as an important signal of the grammatical structure of the utterance. In the Biblical Hebrew reading tradition the musical accents underscored prosodic features which were inherent in the language (Dresher 1994).
200 Cf. the words of the thirteenth-century naqdan Yequtiʾel bar Yehudah: ‘There is no lengthening on the conjunctive accents as there is on the disjunctives and it is not correct to make them long’ (Gumpertz 1958, 145).
201 The occurrence of qameṣ in place of pataḥ in pausal forms such as in ‘he guarded’ (Hos. 12.13), for example, must date to a period before the */ā/ > /ɔ̄/ quality shift took place.
202 Cf. Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, 106): ‘joined to its partner with a long tone’, also Wickes (1887, 24), Ben-David (1957b, 390).
203 The early sources divided the accents into three groups according to the nature of their tone, two of the groups contained high tone accents and the third low tone accents; cf. Yeivin (1980, 168), Eldar (2018, 85– 88).
204 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version (ed. Eldar 2018, 86–87): ‘Every accent that has a vowel remaining after it in the word you should give its full quantity and dwell on it. Every accent after which there is no vowel remaining, however, you should read quickly and not dwell on it’. The Hebrew Maḥberet ha-Tījān, a derivative of Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ uses the Hebrew term hanada
as the equivalent of hazz to denote ‘modulation’ (ed. J. Derenbourg 1871, 97); cf. also Hommel (1917, 95). Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ and its derivative texts only lists pashṭa/yetiv, zaqef and ʾatnaḥ in the category of low tone accent (Arabic waḍʿ, Hebrew niṣṣav, šeḥiyya). The accents silluq and ṭifḥa are stated to have had the same properties as the low tone accents in so far as they were lengthened with a concomitant modulation and rise in tone if they fell on a penultimate syllable. See Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ (ed. Eldar 2018, 85), Maḥberet ha-Tījān (ed. J. Derenbourg 1871, 97), Sefer Ṭaʿame ha-Miqra (ed. Mercerus 1565, facsimile ed. 1978, Diii, a-b). The shift of ṭifḥa from a high to a low tone in word final position is probably also alluded to in Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan, 1967, 106, 155):
‘ [When it occurs on the final syllable] it quickly passes to the category of low tone accents, and so the accent ʾatnaḥ is close to its tone’.
205 Ed. Eldar (2018, 138): In the .
corresponding passage in the Hebrew Maḥberet ha-Tījān it is stated that when the word with pashṭa has more than one vowel, readers ‘skip over’
the merkha and ‘cause its melisma to be swallowed’
(ed. J. Derenbourg 1871, 95).
206 For similar terminology in the surviving sections of Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ see Eldar (2018, 85-88).
207 Ed. Neubauer (ed. 1891, 28):
208 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.3.1.
209 In some Masoretic sources the terms garesh,
garsha ‘extending’ and
maʾarikh ‘lengthening’ are used as general terms to refer a secondary accent in an open syllable marked either by a conjunctive accent or by a gaʿya; cf. Dotan (1967, 163, 342), Yeivin (1980, 86).
210 Yeivin (1980, 206–7). If, however, the second servus before zarqa is munaḥ, the first is always munah.
211 Sefer Ṭaʿame ha-Miqra (ed. Mercerus, 1565, Eiii):
212 Hebrew Maḥberet ha-Tījān (ed. J. Derenbourg 1871, 98):
213 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.3.1. Cf. the orthoepic works derived from the Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, e.g. the Hebrew Maḥberet ha-Tījān (ed. J. Derenbourg, 77) and the Arabic Maḥberet ha-Tījān, (ed. Neubauer 1891, 27), and also the references given by Yeivin (1968, 142).
214 Cf. the passages from the Sefer Zikkaron and the Sefer Mikhlol quoted by Yeivin (1981b, 48–49).
215 ʿEn ha-Qore (Gumpertz 1958, 141).
216 Yeivin (1968, 150 [ʾatnaḥ], 151 [zaqef]).
217 Cf. Yeivin (1980, 244).
218 Cf. Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, 302, 383).
219 Yequtiʾel ha-Naqdan refers to the gaʿya in a closed syllable as ‘heavy’ and the gaʿya in an open syllable as ‘light’. These terms of Yequtiʾel do not denote the way the gaʿyot were pronounced. He states that he called the gaʿya in closed syllables ‘heavy’ since: ‘The heart of many sages is heavy for not having understood them... and the door [of understanding] which is open for the light ones is closed for those which are heavy’ (Gumpertz 1958, 142).
220 For further details concerning the representation of minor gaʿya in the Karaite transcriptions, see Khan (1992c).
221 Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.3.1.
222 Ed. Dotan (1967, 108, §1). Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, on the other hand, does not consider gaʿya to be an accent; cf. Long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.3.1; ed. Eldar 2018, 74-75.
223 Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan 1967, §15), Dotan (1964, 65), Yeivin (1968, 97–98).
224 Menachem Cohen (1982a, 66, 67, 69, 70, 73) has found this feature of gaʿya notation in the manuscripts L, C and in the later medieval Spanish manuscripts BL Or 2201 (dated 1246) and BL Or 2626-8 (dated 1483).
225 E.g. Lehiste (1970, 20).
226 E.g. Öhman (1966), Browman and Goldstein (1989).
227 Another relevant parallel can be found in stress placement patterns in the Modern South Arabian languages. Dufour (2017) has demonstrated that in the history of these languages syllables attracted stress according to a hierarchy of vowel qualities thus: *a > *i > *u. This means that a syllable with an *a was favoured over syllables with higher vowels for stress placement. What is of interest is that a syllable with an *a vowel that was followed by a guttural consonant was less favoured for stress than one that containing an *a vowel that was not followed by a guttural. This can be interpreted as showing that the duration of the vowel was reduced when followed by a guttural and thus the vowel in this context was less suitable for stress. Cf. also Hayward et al. (1988).
228 There is some evidence that the duration of a vowel in an open syllable was also reduced when it was separated from a subsequent haṭef of the same quality by a sonorant oral continuant. When the position of the laryngeal/pharyngeal in the form is taken by one of the sonorant consonants that characteristically do not tolerate dagesh in a syllable with shewa, minor gaʿya regularly occurs (Yeivin 1968, 112– 13), e.g. A
‘and they praised’ (L
2 Chr. 29.30) (§I.2.8.2.2.). Again we may assume that the vowel-like sonorant took away some of the duration from the preceding vowel, making it unsuitable for secondary stress.
229 For detailed treatments of the distribution of shewa gaʿya see Yeivin (1968, 128–37, 252–61; 1980, 252–54), Dotan (1967, 128, 218–22, 357–58, 381), M. Breuer (1982, 193–97).
231 E.g. Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ (short version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.S.5.1, §II.S.5.3), Baer and Strack (1879, 12–13); cf. Khan (2009, 3*- 7*).
232 Ed. Levy (1936, כה), lacunae supplied by CUL Or 1080.13.3.2, fol. 1r:
233 Yeivin (1980, 262) refers to this as a phonetic gaʿya.
234 Data supplied by Shai Heijmans.
235 For a detailed description of the use of maqqef see Yeivin (1980, 228– 36) and the literature cited there. See also Holmstedt and Dresher (2013).
236 E.g. Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim (ed. Dotan, 1967, §§6-8), Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, long version, edition in vol. 2 of this book, §II.L.3.2.4.
237 In the manuscript II Firkovitch Evr. II B 159 (referred to as L2 by Yeivin 1980, 23) the maqqef sign is sometimes marked when the first word has a conjunctive accent, e.g. ‘before I brought them’ (Deut. 31.21) and conversely a maqqef sign is sometimes omitted after a short word without an accent, e.g.
‘and may he not die’ (Deut. 33.6). This appears to reflect the overlapping of two traditions with regard to the division of words.
238 See, for example, Vayra (1994) for this function of glottalization in Italian and Khan (2016b vol. 1, 144-45) for Neo-Aramaic.
239 Birkeland (1940, 31–45), Roman (1983, 494–501).
240 Nöldeke et al. (1938, vol. 3, 199), Ibn Khālawayh (ed. Bergsträsser, 1934, 109).
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