ORTHOGRAPHY and PROSODY in ST the Orthography of ST May Shed
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APPENDIX THREE ORTHOGRAPHY AND PROSODY IN ST The orthography of ST may shed light on its prosody. Whatever the language of composition, it uses a system of vowel markings that are written above the text. These consist of a modified version of Babylo- nian masoretic signs, however, they differ from the Babylonian system in several respects. Most importantly, one vowel sign which looks like pataḥ likely holds metrical significance. In the vast majority of instances where it occurs, this pataḥ seems to denote a short syllable, for example, in the second syllable of the Arabic “al-hawānī.” I have transliterated it as a superscripted “a” when it appears, both in Arabic and in Hebrew strophes. Shlomo Morag has discussed Yemeni Jewish poets’ adherence to Khalīlian quantitative meter as interpreted by Andalusian Jewish poets.1 While Morag is not aware of any discussions of meter among these poets or other Yemeni Jewish writers, he observes that this poetry treats the mobile shva as metrically short, which is the crucial element in Andalusian Jewish prosody that distinguishes between long and short syllables. Morag also points out how Yemeni Jewish poets manipulated the pro- nunciation of their poems to meet the constraints of meter, notably by squeezing separate words together and suppressing vowels. In Shabazī’s Hebrew strophes, this process is not difficult to observe. Examples from poems quoted in the section entitled The Shabazian Poem in Focus in Chapter Five include “ahvat,” “vanī,” “ūtḥadashoh,” and “ūvʿod.” If the pataḥ symbol connotes a short syllable, do the kamets or kamets ḥatuf mean long ones? Probably not. However, the first syllable of the word “yoshīv” is artificially lengthened with kamets, and it stands for alif mamdūdah in “ābāyanā.” In its Hebrew orthography, ST uses the dagesh sporadically. In the transliterated texts of three poems from this manuscript found in 1 Shlomo Morag, Mesorot ha-leshon ha-ʿivrit ve-ha-leshon ha-aramit she-bi-fi yehude teman, ed. Yosef Tobi (Tel Aviv: Afikim, 2001), 267–288. 318 appendix three Chapter Five, I have only indicated it where the manuscript uses it. Also, Hebrew words that normally have the vowel segol or a vocal shva appear in these transliterated texts without them. This is the way that they appear in the manuscript. Ḥ olem is transliterated “ō,” kamets as “a,”2 kamets ḥatuf as “o,” tsayray as “e,” ḥirik as “i,” and pataḥ as a superscript “a.” Shabazī’s Arabic strophes are much more difficult to analyze, owing in part to the general difficulty of scanning ḥumaynī poetry. The techni- cal aspects of Yemeni Jewish Arabic poetry have never been discussed. Dafari’s description of Arab ḥumaynī poetry as having a rather cavalier attitude towards meter holds true for Shabazī’s poetry, at least insofar as it is represented by ST.3 A frustratingly wide range of meters may be used in a single poem. Nevertheless, while individual verses, or even hemistiches, may alternate between metrical patterns, it is quite clear that the poems use quantitative meter. Do the Arabic strophes manipulate pronunciation, or even orthog- raphy, for metrical purposes? The answer is a qualified yes. There are examples of such manipulations: nunnation, the artificial lengthening of the final syllable of a hemistich, the lengthening of a given word (such as miʿā for the preposition maʿa) or the lengthening of a possessive suffix (as in “bihū” or “fī ʿaqlahū”). While these improve the metrical picture, they do not make the text entirely metrically sound. It is possible that the person who performed the poem “corrected” its meter by adding short vowels, as Dafari observed in the Arab material. The manipulation of the definite article seems to be a primary site for such activity, especially in the third poem. Its pronunciation in some cases, and elision in others, would account for a great number of metrical impossibilities in al-Shabazī’s Arabic strophes. There does not seem to be an orthographic symbol for waslaḥ that would enable one to determine these instances from the text itself. Shaddah/dagesh is also sporadically used (Hebrew words that should contain the letter bet usually contain vet instead). While there are instances where its absence accords with the meter, as in “al-ayām” or 2 In the Yemeni pronunciation of Hebrew, both forms of kamets would usually be pronounced o. Shlomo Morag, Ha-ʿIvrit she-be-fi yehude teman (Jerusalem: Academy of the Hebrew Language, 1963), 105–106. 3 The metrical problems in the MS may be the result of a copyist’s or copyists’ unwitting mistakes. .