Will Parsons: You wrote: “As I understandit, "nunation" and "mimation" refer to the use of /n/ or /m/in inflexional singular case endings (already dropped in Biblical Hebrew).” My, you’re going w-a-y back there. Mimation was already out of style by the timeof the Amarna Letters in the mid-14th century BCE! “[T]he phenomenon of mimation…was a common feature of theSemitic languages until the first half of the second [millennium] B.C. Mimation is the addition of an m after thecase ending of the singular noun. …Inthe Amarna Letters there are still remnants of mimation in historical spellingsof Akkadian words and in other forms, although it is evident that mimation hadalready disappeared for other purposes.” Shlomo Izre’el, “TheEl-Amarna Letters from Canaan”, Interdisciplinary Bible Scholar 1 (1979), p.17. http://academia.edu/371049/The_El-Amarna_Letters_from_Canaan But if I may digress, much more important than that from thestandpoint of Biblical studies is the key fact that cuneiform (such as in theAmarna Letters) can’t handle gutturals: “[E]ven for the [east Semitic] Akkadian language, cuneiformwas not really suitable…. It was evenless suitable for writing the Northwestern Semitic languages [Canaanite andHebrew]…. [In particular,] there was noconvenient way to transcribe the gutturals….” P. 20. T-h-a-t is why no onecan understand the name “Potipherah”, which is P W+ Y P R(in the received alphabetical Hebrew text. But because of the “confusion of gutturals” in dealing with the originalcuneiform writing of this Biblical Egyptian name, that’s a bollixed up version[as to the last letter only, which is a guttural] of what was supposed to be pA-wA.ti -- pA rx: the final letter was intended to be Hebrewheth/X, but because of the “confusion of gutturals” that is inherent in cuneiformwriting, it mistakenly came out as Hebrew ayin/(. We maysee the exact same confusion between final heth/X and final ayin/( in the oldwest Semitic word for “arm”, once againinvolving cuneiform and its “confusion of gutturals”. At Amarna Letter EA 287: 27 from Jerusalem,this Canaanite word [as a Canaanite gloss in the cuneiform text] is spelled zu-ru-ux, with the ending being heth/X inAkkadian-style cuneiform. But the actualending of that word is west Semitic ayin/(, as we see for example at Exodus 6:6: Biblical Hebrew ZRW(, where the lastletter is ayin/(, not heth/X. [TheHebrew vav/W there is plene spelling,representing the vowel U [and perhaps also indicating that the third syllable,unlike the first two syllables, is a VC syllable], and with the final letterbeing ayin/(.] Mimationand confusion of gutturals. That takesus all the long way back to the Bronze Age, before any mistakes had yet beenmade in later transforming the original cuneiform written version of thePatriarchal narratives into alphabetical Biblical Hebrew in late 7thcentury BCE Jerusalem. Jim Stinehart Evanston, Illinois
-----Original Message----- From: Will Parsons <[email protected]> To: Yigal.Levin <[email protected]> Cc: b-hebrew <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, Jun 29, 2013 7:25 pm Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Daniel 12:13 Hello Yigal, On Sat, 29 Jun 2013 22:02:40 +0300, Yigal Levin <[email protected]> wrote: > "Nunation", using a nun for the plural instead of mem, is a well-know > phenomenon of Mishnaic Hebrew, apparently due to Aramaic influence. As Ken > mentioned below, it is also well-known in the DSS. It was fairly standard in > the Hebrew of the Second Temple period and later. Even in the Iron Age, it > appeared in Moabite and Ammonite. Not surprising to find it in Daniel, > considering the fairly late date of its composition, and the fact that the > writer was obviously bi-lingual. I would agree that the phenomenon is due to Aramaic influence, but I hesitate at your usage of the term "nunation" to describe it. As I understand it, "nunation" and "mimation" refer to the use of /n/ or /m/ in inflexional singular case endings (already dropped in Biblical Hebrew). If my understanding is incorrect, feel free to correct me! -- Will Parsons μὴ φαίνεσθαι, ἀλλ' εἶναι. _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
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