Matres lectionis

A ''mater lectionis'' ( , ; , ''matres lectionis'' ; original ) is any consonant letter that is used to indicate a vowel, primarily in the writing of Semitic languages such as Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac. The letters that do this in Hebrew are ''aleph'' , '' he'' , '' vav'' and '' yud'' , with the latter two in particular being more often vowels than they are consonants. In Arabic, the ''matres lectionis'' (though they are much less often referred to thus) are ''ʾalif'' , ''wāw'' and ''yāʾ'' .

The original value of the ''matres lectionis'' corresponds closely to what are called in modern linguistics '' glides'' or ''semivowels''.

Overview

Because the scripts used to write some Semitic languages lack vowel letters, unambiguous reading of a text might be difficult. Therefore, to indicate vowels (mostly long), consonant letters are used. For example, in the Hebrew construct-state form ''bēt'', meaning "the house of", the middle letter in the spelling acts as a vowel, but in the corresponding absolute-state form ''bayit'' ("house"), which is spelled the same, the same letter represents a genuine consonant. ''Matres lectionis'' are extensively employed only in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac and Arabic, but the phenomenon is also found in the Ugaritic, Moabite, South Arabian and Phoenician alphabets.

Origins and development

Historically, the practice of using ''matres lectionis'' seems to have originated when and diphthongs, written with the '' yod'' and the '' waw'' consonant letters respectively, monophthongized to simple long vowels and . This epiphenomenal association between consonant letters and vowel sounds was then seized upon and used in words without historic diphthongs.

In general terms, it is observable that early Phoenician texts have very few ''matres lectionis'', and that during most of the 1st millennium BCE, Hebrew and Aramaic were quicker to develop ''matres lectionis'' than Phoenician. However, in its latest period of development in North Africa (referred to as "Punic"), Phoenician developed a very full use of ''matres lectionis'', including the use of the letter ''ayin'' , also used for this purpose much later in Yiddish orthography.

In pre-exilic Hebrew, there was a significant development of the use of the letter '' he'' to indicate word final vowels other than ''ī'' and ''ū''. This was probably inspired by the phonological change of the third-person singular possessive suffix from > > in most environments. However, in later periods of Hebrew, the orthography was changed so word-final ''ō'' was no longer written with , except in a few archaically-spelled proper names, such as Solomon and Shiloh . The difference between the spelling of the third-person singular possessive suffix (as attached to singular nouns) with in early Hebrew versus with in later Hebrew has become an issue in the authentication of the Jehoash Inscription.

According to Sass (5), already in the Middle Kingdom there were some cases of ''matres lectionis'', i.e. consonant graphemes which were used to transcribe vowels in foreign words, namely in Punic (Jensen 290, Naveh 62), Aramaic, and Hebrew (, , ; sometimes even ''aleph'' ; Naveh 62). Naveh (ibid.) notes that the earliest Aramaic and Hebrew documents already used ''matres lectionis''. Some scholars argue that the Greeks must therefore have borrowed their alphabet from the Arameans. However, the practice has older roots, as the Semitic cuneiform alphabet of Ugarit (13th century BC) already had ''matres lectionis'' (Naveh 138).

Usage in different languages

Hebrew

The earliest method of indicating some vowels in Hebrew writing was to use the consonant letters ''yod'' , ''waw'' , ''he'' , and ''aleph'' of the Hebrew alphabet to also write long vowels in some cases. Originally, and were only used as matres lectiones at the end of words, and and were used mainly to write the original diphthongs and as well as sequences ( surrounded by two vowels, which sometimes simplified to plain long vowels). Gradually, as it was found to be insufficient for differentiating between similar nouns, and were also inserted to mark some long vowels of non-diphthongal origin.

If words can be written with or without ''matres lectionis'', spellings that include the letters are called ''malē'' (Hebrew) or ''plene'' (Latin), meaning "full", and spellings without them are called ''ḥaser'' or ''defective''. In some verb forms, ''matres lectionis'' are almost always used. Around the 9th century CE it was decided that the system of ''matres lectionis'' did not suffice to indicate the vowels precisely enough for purposes of liturgical recitation of Biblical texts so a supplemental vowel pointing system (''niqqud'', diacritic symbols indicating vowel pronunciation and other important phonological features not written by the traditional basic consonantal orthography) joined ''matres lectionis'' as part of the Hebrew writing system.

In some words in Hebrew, there is a choice of whether to use a ''mater lectionis'' or not, and in modern printed texts ''matres lectionis'' are sometimes used even for short vowels, which is considered to be grammatically incorrect according to traditional norms, though instances are found as far back as Talmudic times. Such texts from Judaea and Galilee were noticeably more inclined to ''malē'' spellings than texts from Babylonia. Similarly, in the Middle Ages, Ashkenazi Jews tended to use ''malē'' spellings under the influence of European languages, but Sephardi Jews tended to use ''ḥaser'' spellings under the influence of Arabic.

Most commonly, ''yod'' indicates ''i'' or ''e'', while ''waw'' indicates ''o'' or ''u''. ''Aleph'' was not systematically developed as a ''mater lectionis'' in Hebrew (unlike in Aramaic and Arabic), but it is occasionally used to indicate an ''a'' vowel. (However, a silent , indicating an original glottal stop consonant sound that has become silent in some contexts in Hebrew pronunciation, can occur after almost any vowel.) At the end of a word, ''he'' can also be used to indicate that the vowel ''a'' or ''e'' should be pronounced.

Examples:
:

Arabic

In Arabic, there is no choice, and the almost invariable rule is that a long vowel is written with a ''mater lectionis'' and a short vowel with a diacritic symbol, but the Uthmanic orthography, the one in which the Quran is traditionally written and printed, has some differences, which are not always consistent. Also, under influence from orthography of European languages, transliterating of vowels in borrowed words into Arabic is usually done using ''matres lectionis'' in place of diacritics, even when the vowel transliterated is short or when words from another Semitic language, such as Hebrew, are transliterated. That phenomenon is augmented by the neglect of diacritics in most printed forms since the beginning of mechanical printing.

The name given to the three ''matres lectionis'' by traditional Arabic grammar is (, 'consonants of softness and lengthening'), or (, 'causal consonants' or 'consonants of infirmity', because as in Greek grammar, words with 'accidents' were deemed to be afflicted, ill, in opposition to 'healthy' words without accidents).

Informal orthographies of spoken varieties of Arabic also use '' hāʾ'' to indicate a shorter version of ''alif'' in final position, a usage augmented by the ambiguity of the use of and ''tāʾ marbūṭah'' in formal Arabic orthography. It is a formal orthography in other languages that use Arabic script, such as Kurdish alphabets.

Syriac

Syriac-Aramaic vowels are classified into three groups: the ''alap'' (), the ''waw'' (), and the ''yod'' (). The ''mater lectionis'' was developed as early as the 6th century to represent long vowels, which were earlier denoted by a dot under the line. The most frequent ones are the ''yod'' and the ''waw'', while the ''alap'' is mostly restricted to some transliterated words.

Mandaic

In the Mandaic alphabet, vowels are usually written out in full. The first letter, ''a'' (corresponding to ''alaph''), is used to represent a range of open vowels. The sixth letter, ''wa'', is used for close back vowels (''u'' and ''o''), and the tenth letter, ''ya'' is used for close front vowels (''i'' and ''e''). These last two can also serve as the consonants ''w/v'' and ''y''. The eighth letter corresponds to the Semitic ''heth'', and is called ''eh''; it is pronounced as a long ''i''-vowel but is used only as a suffix for the third person singular. The sixteenth letter, ''e'' (Aramaic '' ayn''), usually represents ''e'' at the beginning of a word or, when followed by ''wa'' or ''ya'', represents initial ''u'' or ''i'' respectively.

Influence on other languages

Later, in some adaptations of the Arabic alphabet (such those sometimes used for Kurdish and Uyghur) and of the Hebrew alphabet (such as those used for Judeo-Arabic, Yiddish and Judaeo-Spanish), ''matres lectionis'' were generally used for all or most vowels, thus in effect becoming vowel letters: see Yiddish orthography. This tendency was taken to its logical conclusion in fully alphabetic scripts such as Greek, Latin, and Cyrillic. Many of the vowel letters in such languages historically go back to ''matres lectionis'' in the Phoenician script. For example, the letter was originally derived from the consonant letter ''yod''. Similarly the vowel letters in the Avestan alphabet were adapted from ''matres lectionis'' in the version of the Aramaic alphabet adapted as the Pahlavi scripts.

See also

* Hebrew spelling
* Ktiv hasar niqqud
* Mappiq
* Niqqud
* Tiberian vocalization

Notes

Bibliography

*
* Canteins, Jean. 1972. ''Phonèmes et archétypes: contextes autour d'une structure trinitaire; AIU''. Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose.
* Garr, W. Randall. 1985. ''Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine, 1000-586 B.C.E.'' Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
* Jensen, Hans. 1970. ''Sign Symbol and Script''. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. Transl. of ''Die Schrift in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart''. VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften. 1958, as revised by the author.
* Naveh, Joseph. 1975. ''Origins of the Alphabet''. London: Cassell; translated as ''Die Entstehung des Alphabets''. Zürich und Köln: Benziger, 1979.
* Sass, Benjamin. 1991. ''Studia Alphabetica. On the origin and early history of the Northwest Semitic, South Semitic and Greek alphabets''. CH-Freiburg: Universitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mater Lectionis
Arabic grammar
Arabic language
Arabic letters
Hebrew alphabet
Hebrew grammar
Semitic languages
Semitic linguistics
Semitic writing systems
Vowel letters