Tiberian Language

Tiberian Hebrew is the canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) committed to writing by Masoretic scholars living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Galilee under the Abbasid Caliphate. They wrote in the form of Tiberian vocalization, which employed diacritics added to the Hebrew letters: vowel signs and consonant diacritics ( nequdot) and the so-called accents (two related systems of cantillation signs or ''te'amim''). These together with the marginal notes masora magna and masora parva make up the Tiberian apparatus.

Though the written vowels and accents came into use in around 750 CE, the oral tradition that they reflect is many centuries older, with ancient roots.

Sources

Today's Hebrew grammar books do not teach the Tiberian Hebrew that was described by the early grammarians. The prevailing view is that of David Qimchi's system of dividing the graphic signs into "short" and "long" vowels. The values assigned to the Tiberian vowel signs reveals a Sephardi tradition of pronunciation (the dual quality of qames () as , ; the pronunciation of simple ''sheva'' () as ).

The phonology of Tiberian Hebrew can be gleaned from the collation of various sources:
* The Aleppo Codex of the Hebrew Bible and ancient manuscripts of the Tanakh cited in the margins of early codices, all which preserve direct evidence in a graphic manner of the application of vocalization rules such as the widespread use of chateph vowels where one would expect simple ''sheva'', thus clarifying the color of the vowel pronounced under certain circumstances. Most prominent is the use of chateph chireq in five words under a consonant that follows a guttural vocalized with regular chireq (as described by Israel Yeivin) as well as the anomalous use of the raphe sign over letters that do not belong to or .
* The explicit statements found in grammars of the 10th and the 11th centuries, including the ''Sefer haQoloth'' of Moshe ben Asher (published by N. Allony); the ''Sefer Dikdukei ha-Te'amim'' ( Grammar or Analysis of the Accents) of Aaron ben Moses ben Asher; the anonymous works entitled ''Horayath haQoré'' (G. Khan and Ilan Eldar attribute it to the Karaite Abu Alfaraj Harun); the ''Treatise on the Schwa'' (published by Kurt Levy from a Genizah fragment in 1936), and ''Ma'amar haschewa'' (published from Genizah material by Allony); the works of medieval Sephardi grammarians including Abraham Ibn Ezra and Judah ben David Hayyuj. In the last two, it is evident that the chain of transmission is breaking down or that their interpretations are influenced by local tradition.
* Ancient manuscripts that preserve similar dialects of Hebrew or Palestinian Aramaic but are vocalized in Tiberian signs in a "vulgar" manner and so reveal a phonetic spelling rather than a phonemic spelling. They include the so-called "pseudo-Ben Naphtali" or "Palestinian-Sephardi" vocalized manuscripts, which generally conform to the rules enumerated below, such as pronouncing ''sheva'' as before consonantal yod, as in .
* Other traditions such as the vocalization of the Land of Israel and (to a lesser extent) the Babylonian vocalization. Each community (Palestinian, Tiberian, Babylonian) developed systems of notation for pronunciation in each dialect, some of which are common among the traditions.
* The transcriptions of Biblical text into Arabic characters and then vocalized with Tiberian signs (by members of the Karaite community) provide an aid to pronouncing Tiberian Hebrew, especially for syllable structure and vowel length (which is marked in Arabic by matres lectionis and the sign sukun).
* Various oral traditions, especially that of Yemenite Hebrew pronunciation and the Karaite tradition, have both preserved old features that correspond to Tiberian tradition, such as the pronunciation of schwa according to its proximity to gutturals or yod.

Phonology

Consonants

Tiberian Hebrew has 29 consonantal phonemes, represented by 22 letters. The sin dot distinguishes between the two values of , with a dot on the left () being pronounced the same as the letter Samekh. The letters ( begadkefat) had two values each: plosive and fricative.

The following are the most salient characteristics of the Tiberian Hebrew consonantal pronunciation:
* Waw conjunctive was read, before the labial vowels () and shva (), as , rather than (as is the case in some eastern reading traditions).

* The threefold pronunciation of Resh . Even though there is no agreement as to how it was pronounced, the rules of distribution of such pronunciation is given in ''Horayath haQoré'':

: a) "Normal" Resh pronounced thus (according to Eldar, as a uvular sound ) in all other instances (except for the circumstances described below):

: b) The "peculiar" resh before or after Lamed or Nun, any of the three being vocalized with simple ''sheva'' and Resh after Zayin , Daleth , Samekh , Sin , Taw , Tzadi , Teth , any of them punctuated with simple ''sheva'': , . Because of the proximity of a dental consonant, it is likely that Resh was then pronounced as an alveolar trill, as it still is in Sephardi Hebrew.

: c) There is still another pronunciation, affected by the addition of a dagesh in the Resh in certain words in the Bible, which indicates it was doubled : . As can be seen, this pronunciation has to do with the progressive increase in length of this consonant (). It was preserved only by the population of Ma'azya (מעזיה), which is in Tiberias.

* A possible threefold pronunciation of Taw ת. There are three words in the Torah, Prophets, and Writings in which it is said that "the Taw is pronounced harder than usual". It is said that this pronunciation was halfway between the soft Taw ת and the hard Taw תּ :

Vowels

#marginal

The vowel qualities have phonemic status: (Lev. 5:19) and 'guilty', 'when' and 'mother'. has phonemic value in final stressed position , but in other positions, it may reflect loss of the opposition : . By the Tiberian period, all short vowels in stressed syllables had lengthened, making vowel length allophonic.In fact, all stressed vowels were first lengthened in pause, see , as can be seen by forms like Tiberian < *, pausal < * < * < *. The shift in Tiberian Hebrew of * > * occurred after that lengthening but before the loss of phonemicity of length (since words like with allophonically long show no such shift). Vowels in open or stressed syllables had allophonic length (such as in , which was previously short).That is attested to by the testimony of Rabbi Joseph Qimḥi (12th century) and by medieval Arabic transcriptions: . There is also possible evidence from the cantillation marks' behaviour and Babylonian pataḥ: .

The Tiberian tradition possesses three reduced (ultrashort, ''hatuf'') vowels of which has questionable phonemicity.See 'ships' 'I', 'sickness' 'ornament', 'ascend!' (Num 21:17) and '(with the) pestle' (Prov 27:22). alternates with frequently and rarely contrasts with it: ' Edom' versus 'Edomite'. is clearly phonemic but bears minimal functional load. is written both with ''mobile šwa'' and ''hataf patah'' . , under a non-guttural letter, was pronounced as an ultrashort copy of the following vowel before a guttural ( ) and as preceding , ( ). However, it was always pronounced as under gutturals: .

Stress

Tiberian Hebrew has phonemic stress ( 'they built' vs. 'in us'). Stress is most commonly ultimate, less commonly penultimate, and rarely antepenultimate stress: 'into the tent'.

In fact, it is not clear that a reduced vowel should be considered to be a whole syllable. For example, a word's stress shifts to a preceding open syllable to avoid it from being adjacent to another stressed syllable skips over ultrashort vowels: 'with those who go down into the pit' 'pierced with a sword'. See

Phonotactics

As described above, vowel length is dependent on syllable structure. Open syllables must take long or ultrashort vowels; stressed closed syllables take long vowels; unstressed closed syllables take short vowels. Traditional Hebrew philology considers ultrashort vowels not to be syllable nuclei.

Orthography

The simple ''sheva'' sign changes its pronunciation depending on its position in the word (mobile/vocal or quiescent/ zero) and its proximity to certain consonants.

In these examples, it has been preferred to show one in the Bible and represents each phenomenon in a graphic manner (a chateph vowel), but the rules still apply when there is only a simple ''sheva'' (depending on the manuscript or edition used).

When the simple ''sheva'' appears in any of the following positions, it is regarded as mobile (na):

* At the beginning of a word, which includes the ''sheva'' (originally the first of the word) following the attached particles bi-,ki-,li- and u- and preceded by ''metheg'' (the vertical line placed to the left of the vowel sign, which stands for either secondary stress or its lengthening). Examples: Genesis 2:12; Psalms 74:5. But is not pronounced if there is no ''metheg''; that is, they form a closed syllable.
* The ''sheva'' following these three vowels , except for known types of closed syllables (and preceded or not, by metheg). Examples: Exodus 3:18; Exodus 4:18.
* The second of two adjacent ''sheva''s, when both appear under different consonants. Examples: Jeremiah 31:33; Jeremiah 32:9 (except for at the end of a word, ).
* The ''sheva'' under the first of two identical consonants, preceded by metheg. Examples: Gen. 14:7; Exodus: 15:10.
* The ''sheva'' under a consonant with dagesh forte or lene. Examples: Isaiah 9:3; Ezekiel 17:23.
* The ''sheva'' under a consonant that expects gemination but is not so marked, for example, the one found under . And sometimes even when preceded by the article. Examples: Genesis 12:3; 2 Chronicles 33:18.
* In case a quiescent ''sheva'' was followed either by a guttural or yodh, it would turn into mobile according to the rules given below, if preceded by a metheg. Ancient manuscripts support that view. Examples: Proverbs 28:22; Job 1:3.
* Any ''sheva'', if the sign metheg is attached to it, would change an ultrashort vowel to a short, or normal length vowel. For this, only ancient, reliable manuscripts can give us a clear picture, since, with time, later vocalizers added to the number of methegs found in the Bible.

The gutturals (), and yodh (), affect the pronunciation of the ''sheva'' preceding them. The allophones of the phoneme follow these two rules:

* It would change its sound to imitate that of the following guttural. Numbers 3:17; Numbers 5:28.
* It would be pronounced as ''ḥireq'' before consonantal ''yodh''. Examples: Jeremiah 21:1; in Maimonides' autograph in his commentary to the Mishnah.These two rules, as well as the rule that ''metheg'' changes ''sheva'' from an ultrashort to a normal vowel, are recorded by Solomon Almoli in his ''Halichot Sheva'' (Constantinople 1519), though he states that these differences are dying out and that in most places vocal ''sheva'' is pronounced like ''segol''. In Oriental communities such as the Syrians, these rules continued to be recorded by grammarians into the 1900s (such as Sethon, Menasheh, ''Kelale Diqduq ha-qeriah'', Aleppo 1914), but they were not normally reflected in actual pronunciation. The rules about ''yodh'' and ''metheg'', though not the rule about gutturals, is still observed by the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam: Rodrigues Pereira, Martin,'' 'Hochmat Shelomoh''.

It must be said that even though there are no special signs apart to denote the full range of furtive vowels, the remaining four () are represented by simple ''sheva'' (ḥaṭaf ḥiriq () in the Aleppo Codex is a scribal oddity and certainly not regular in Hebrew manuscripts with Tiberian vocalization).

All other cases should be treated as zero vowel (quiescent, nah), including the double final ''sheva'' (double initial ''sheva'' does not exist in this Hebrew dialect), and the ''sheva'' in the words and , read by the Tiberian Masoretes as and respectively. This last case has similarities with phenomena occurring in the Samaritan pronunciation and the Phoenician language.

Depending on the school of pronunciation (and relying on musical grounds, perhaps), the metheg sign served to change some closed syllables into open ones, and therefore, changing the vowel from short to long, and the quiescent ''sheva'', into a mobile one.

That is referenced specifically by medieval grammarians:

The names of the vowel diacritics are iconic and show some variation:

Notes

References

Bibliography

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Tiberian Vocalization
Language of the Hebrew Bible
Medieval languages
Extinct languages of Asia