Re: Semitic rhotic questions

Muke Tever wrote:

> On Fri, 7 Nov 2003 09:33:49 -0500, Paul Bennett wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 18:36:10 +0200, Isaac Penzev wrote:
> >
> >>> 1. Does anyone know with any acceptable degree of
> >>> certainty what the actual value of the Biblical Hebrew
> >>> rhotic was?
> >>
> >> It is rather possible that Old Hebrew /r/ was [G] or [R] because it is
> >> classified as guttural, and its presence in the stem provokes the same
> >> kind of phonetic changes, as, e.g. /X\/ or /?\/.
> [snip]
> > Anyone else got any information to back up either /4/ or /G/~/R/ for
> > ancient Hebrew? Steg? Dan? Anyone?
>
> Etymologically speaking... _Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic_ describes
> the sound *r as a flap [4], and remaining *r in most of the family (except
> Egyptian, where it goes to [n], [?], and [j] depending on environment)
>
> [Of course there's nothing to say it didnt change _since_ then, as I
> gather something hideous happened to the original PS *G in Hebrew from PAA
> *G and *G_w...]
Well, I know nothing about these reconstructions, so it was only my supposition
/ speculation. Arguments in favor of "resh" standing for a guttural in times of,
at least, Masorets:
1. It doesn't receive dagesh (doesn't geminate):
2. It provokes compensatory lengthening:
_ha:ro:sh_ instead of *harro:sh like _ha:3i:r_
3. Sometimes it is vocalised with hhatef (ultrashort) vowels, e.g.
_'ava:ra(ce:m_ "I will bless them" (Num.6:27).
All these features are peculiar to gutturals.

But specialists in language history may know better.

Blessings,
-- Yitzik