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Phonemic Spelling and Scriptio Continua for Sandhi Phenomena and Glottal Stop Deletion: Proto-Sinaitic Vs

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Phonemic Spelling and Scriptio Continua for Sandhi Phenomena and Glottal Stop Deletion: Proto-Sinaitic Vs Phonemic Spelling and Scriptio Continua for Sandhi Phenomena and Glottal Stop Deletion: Proto-Sinaitic vs. Hebrew RICHARD C. STEINER, Yeshiva University* Introduction writing system is one that employs morphophonemic spelling. Martin Neef and Miriam Balestra provide Orthographic depth is the name given to one of the an alternate definition: “According to a different ter- criteria for classifying writing systems. One defini- minological approach, a shallow orthography can be tion of this term is given by Henry Rogers: “In a characterized as having a one-to-one relation between writing system which is orthographically shallow, sounds and letters whereas a deep orthography de- graphemes represent phonemes; in a writing system viates from this isomorphism.”3 This definition has which is orthographically deep, graphemes represent the advantage of being broader; it includes all non- morphophonemes.”1 According to this definition, an phonemic spellings, i.e., historical spellings as well as orthographically shallow writing system is one that morphophonemic spellings. For the student of an- employs phonemic spelling;2 an orthographically deep cient texts, this definition is convenient because the information needed to distinguish purely historical * I would like to thank Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo, W. Randall spellings or purely morphophonemic spellings from Garr, A. R. Millard, and Malcah Yaeger-Dror for their careful read- ing of a draft of this article and for the numerous improvements spellings that are both historical and morphopho- that they suggested. nemic is often unavailable. In this article, therefore, we 1 Henry Rogers, Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach (Ox- shall often speak simply of “non-phonemic spellings.” ford, 2005), 177. 2 Geoffrey Sampson Writing( Systems: A Linguistic Introduction [Stanford, CA, 1985], 43–44) divides the orthographic continuum ing to perceive. For example, native speakers of English are usually into three levels: (1) phonetic spelling, (2) phonemic spelling, and surprised to learn that the [k]-sound in key is quite different from (3) morphophonemic spelling. In this division, (1) is the shallowest the [k]-sound in coo, or that the [p]-sound in spit is quite different and (3) is the deepest. It must be emphasized, however, that the from the [p]-sound in pit. One might even argue that the adop- term phonetic spelling is commonly used with reference to phonemic tion of genuine phonetic spelling would subvert the whole point of spelling. Genuine phonetic spelling was rare until the creation of alphabetic writing, viz., simplicity. special symbols in the modern period. Normal alphabets do not 3 Martin Neef and Miriam Balestra, “Measuring Graphematic contain nearly enough symbols to represent all of the phonetic (sub- Transparency: German and Italian Compared,” in Typology of Writ- phonemic, allophonic) variation that typically occurs in natural, col- ing Systems, ed. Susanne R. Borgwaldt and Terry Joyce (Amster- loquial speech. Indeed, most native speakers are, for the most part, dam, 2013), 114. See also Florian Coulmas, Writing Systems: An quite unaware of such variation, which often requires special train- Introduction to Their Linguistic Analysis (Cambridge, 2003), 213. [JNES 75 no. 2 (2016)] © 2016 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 022–2968–2016/7501–008 $10.00. DOI: 10.1086/687600 311 This content downloaded from 129.098.033.014 on January 30, 2019 11:09:46 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 312 F Journal of Near Eastern Studies The distinction between phonemic spelling and even the (ʾ)a is not marked at all, so that it is morphophonemic spelling requires further clarifica- indicated by the context only.5 tion. Phonemic spelling is characterized by a one- In other words, some of the earliest Judeo-Arabic texts to-one correspondence between graphemes (letters) are characterized by phonemic spelling,6 in contrast to and phonemes, ignoring allophonic variation.4 Mor- the morphophonemic spelling that later displaced it. phophonemic spelling is characterized by a one-to- It is not at all unusual for phonemic and morpho- one correspondence between grapheme sequences phonemic spellings to occur side by side in a single and morphemes, ignoring allomorphic variation. A writing system. Indeed, they can even be found to- few examples should make these definitions clearer. gether in a single word. This is what Geoffrey Samp- Readers who find these examples superfluous are free son means when he writes that “a given writing system to skip them, but I believe that they are interesting in may well be deep in its representation of one aspect of their own right. a spoken language but shallow in its representation of As an example of morphophonemic spelling, we another aspect.”7 For example, the suffixed morpheme may take the suffixed morpheme used in English to -ex used in English to express plurality is spelled s in cats press possession. It is (usually) spelled ’s even though (voiceless /s/) and in dogs (voiced /z/), but es in it has three distinct phonemic shapes (allomorphs) fishes (epenthetic vowel + voiced /z/). The last spell- in cat’s (voiceless /s/), dog’s (voiced /z/), and fish’s ing, contrasting with possessive fish’s discussed above, (epenthetic vowel + voiced /z/). If the spelling were could be viewed as partly phonemic (the e) and partly phonemic, we would have dog’z and fish’ez. morphophonemic (the s).8 For a Semitic example of the two types of orthog- Similarly, in the earliest Judeo-Arabic translation of raphy, we may turn to Judeo-Arabic. The standard to the Lord.”9“ ,אילא ארב Proverbs, we find the phrase orthography of Judeo-Arabic is deep, with morpho- The spelling of the definite article in the second word phonemic spellings borrowed from the standard Ara- is partly phonemic and partly morphophonemic. A bic orthography. Thus, the prefixed morpheme used to fully morphophonemic spelling of the second word even though ,אל express definiteness is always spelled a fully phonemic spelling, representing ;אלרב would be its pronunciation frequently diverges from that spell- to” as“ ,אילא the apheresis (elision) of /ʾa/ following ing as a result of apheresis (making the aleph super- well as the total assimilation of /l/, would be indistin- fluous) and/or total assimilation (making the lamed .רב guishable from indefinite superfluous). Similarly, the suffixed morpheme used to So too in Akkadian, when šu, “his,” was suffixed to not only , ̈-ה mark feminine singular nouns is written māt, “land,” the result, meaning “his land,” was pro- in the absolute state, where it is pronounced [a], but nounced [mas:u]. However, it was frequently written also in the construct state, where it is pronounced [at]. ma-at-su or the like. This spelling is partly phonemic In recent decades, it has become apparent that (the suffixšu written su) and partly morphophonemic Judeo-Arabic also had, for a limited time, a shallow (the stem māt written ma-at instead of ma-as). In orthography: the earliest texts, we find the purely phonemic spell- Until the 10th century A.D., another Judaeo- ing ma-as-su; peripheral Akkadian texts have purely Arabic spelling in H(ebrew) characters ex- morphophonemic spellings like *ma-at-šu.10 isted, reflecting pure phonetic transcription of A(rabic), at least originally, without any influ- ence of A(rabic) orthography. Not only are all the erratic and idiosyncratic traits of A(rabic) spelling totally absent, including the marking of 5 Joshua Blau, A Handbook of Early Middle Arabic (Jerusalem, tāʾ marbūṭa in construct by -h, rather than by 2002), 21. 6 For Blau’s use of the term phonetic transcription, see n. 2 -t, but such a convenient feature as the mor- above. phophonematic spelling of the definite article 7 Sampson, Writing Systems, 45. is totally lacking: preceding “sun” letters the l 8 Ibid., 44 (with modifications). See also immediately below is always omitted and in external close juncture and n. 41 below. 9 Blau, Handbook, 147 (Prov. 16:3). 10 For this whole discussion, see at n. 175 below. See also n. 41 4 For allophonic variation, see n. 2 above. below. This content downloaded from 129.098.033.014 on January 30, 2019 11:09:46 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Phonemic Spelling and Scriptio Continua for Sandhi Phenomena F 313 In this article, I shall argue three points: first, that the Rabbis as part of the Oral Law), independent of and with deep 13,(מסורת in the proto-alphabetic11 inscriptions discovered at the written text tradition (the Serābīṭ el-Khādem in the Sinai Desert, the orthog- roots in antiquity. These two distinct traditions, one raphy of Old Canaanite is shallow to a remarkable written and one oral, are well suited for preserving the degree, much like the orthography of the Northwest two distinct linguistic levels associated with morpho- Semitic serpent spells in the Pyramid Texts; second, phonemic spelling: the outward written form and the that the scriptio continua employed in these early texts oral (phonemic) reality hidden beneath it. can be viewed as an integral part of their shallow or- In the cases discussed below, it will become appar- thography; and third, that the orthography of Hebrew ent that the pronunciations recorded by the Masoretes (biblical and even postbiblical) is (despite exceptions are quite plausible, agreeing with other available evi- here and there) deep. dence. In the most interesting case, a rare use of dagesh Showing that a given spelling is phonemic is, for the in the Leningrad Codex will be shown to reveal the phenomena discussed in this article, simply a matter existence of a strikingly distinctive Northwest Semitic of noting that a letter is omitted.
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