Biblical Hebrew Poetry - House of David Steinberg

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Biblical Hebrew Poetry and Word Play - Reconstructing the Original Oral, Aural and Visual Experience by David Steinberg
- Elision of syllable or word-final aliph. This probably occurred early in this period.
- [ś] ] > [s]
- Reduction of final doubled consonants
- Disappearance of intervocalic [h]
- Spirantization
of the bgdkpt Consonants
- unstressed [aw] > [ô];
[
- unstressed [ay] > [ệ];
[
- Reduction of certain
unstressed vowels to shewa or, in the environment of a laryngeal consonant, to another ultrashort
vowel. Egs.
prepositions
[ba] > [bә]
[la] > [lә]
[ka] > [kә]
(ii
ii) ) Developments that clearly occurred in Phase 4
- [ḫ] ] > [ḥ]; [ġ] > [ c ] before c. 200 CE
- in contrast to the general Semitic tendency open pre-tonic syllables undergo lengthening and sometimes change of
vowel quality: a>ā, i>ệ. In the case of /u/, the short u remains, but the following consonant is doubled. e.g. */luqaḥ/ >
/luqqaḥ/ (see - Pretonic Vowel Lengthening and doubling) c. 300 BCE
(iii) ) Developments that may have occurred in Phase 4 or in Phase 5.
- pausal lengthening of vowels
- earlier vowel allophones become phonemes (ẹ ( ɛ o)
- tendency toward stressing of the last syllable 70 . With very few exceptions open penultimate short stressed syllables
were not preserved except, frequently, in pause. The vowel changes which accompanied this stress shift were
different from those in the preceding stress period. Examples -
• Nouns - */ˈpir
piryu/ > */ˈpir
piry/ or */ˈpi
pirî/ (phase 3) → /ˈpri/ [ˈpr
priː
iː] or [pәˈriː
iː] (context TH), /ˈpɛri/ [ˈpɛriː]
(pausal TH)
• Verbs PC - most root types and stems stress in the second person feminine singular, the second
person feminine plural and the third person masculine plural moves to the final syllable in the contextual form
but not in the pausal form due to the pausal lengthening of the stressed vowel. The same is true in the