Unexpected Dageshes

by Geoffrey Khan

found in the Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 384-389

In the Tiberian reading tradition of Biblical Hebrew resh was pronounced in two different ways, as was the case with the בגדכפת bgdkpt letters.

According to the 11th-century treatise Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ ‘Guide for the Reader’, its basic primary articulation was with ‘the middle third of the tongue’, as was the case with qof and plosive kaf, suggesting an advanced uvular position (Eldar 1984). It is not made clear whether it was a roll [ʀ] of frictionless continuant [ʁ̞].

The secondary pronunciation of resh is said in the medieval sources to occur in the environment of the alveolar consonants דזצתטסלן dzṣtṭsln and can be inferred to be an alveolar trill. It is described by Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ as being of intermediate length (manzila bayn manzilatayn ‘stage between two stages’), i.e., intermediate between the simple primary resh and double resh marked with a dagesh sign in Tiberian vocalization (Eldar 1984). When contrasting it with the simple rash, the Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ describes the secondary resh as “heavy” (yuṭqiluhu ẓabran ‘he [the reader] clearly makes it heavy’). Sa'adya refers to it as resh with dagesh (Commentary of ספר יצירה Sefer Yeṣira ‘Book of Creation’, ed. Lambert 1891:79). It is referred to in the sources by the Arabic term reš makrūḵ. The word makrūḵ has been interpreted by scholars in various ways (Marag 19601207-219). The most satisfactory interpretation is that it is an Arabicized form of the Hebrew word כָּרוּךְ kåruḵ ‘wrapped up, closed up’, which is found in Masoretic sources in reference to closed syllables. In the phrase reš makrūḵ, the term is a calque of the Arabic phonetic term muṭbaq (literally ‘closed’), which wes used in the medieval Arabic grammatical tradition to refer to emphatic consonants, i.e., consonants with retraction of the tongue (Khan 1995). This variant of resh, therefore, was pronounced as an emphatic consonant. Evidence for this is found in a medieval report that the scholar Isaac Israeli (9th-10h centuries), ‘an expert in the Tiberian reading tradition’, pronounced the daled in the word וַֽיַּדְרְכ֤וּ way-yadraḵū ‘and they bent’ (Jer. 9.2) like the emphatic Arabic ḍ, which must have arisen by assimilation of the emphasis of the contiguous resh. Another medieval source refers to the retroflexion (Arabic taqtallub) of the tongue in the articulation of this variant of resh (Allony 1973; Khan 1995:79). Retroflexion of the tongue is a feature often associnted with emphatic alveolar ṛ in modern spoken Semitic languages. The references to the lengthened, heavy pronunciation of the secondary resh can be correlated to the fact that emphatic ṛ in the modern Semitic languages is often pronounced longer than non-emphatic r, due to greater muscular tension, in that the former is as a trill and the latter a flap (Khan 1999:79). Resh is pronounced as an emphatic in the Hebrew reading traditions of many communities in Arabic-spcaking regions and in the Hebrew component in modem spoken Judeo-Arabic dialects (Bar-Asher 1992:46; Henshke 2007:34), though the distribution is different from that of the emphatic resh of the Tiberian tradition.

Aceneding to the Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ and other medieval sources this apico-alveolar emphatic resh occurred when preceded by the consonants דזצתטסלן dzṣtṭsln or followed by לן ln and when either resh or one of these consonants has shewa. This can be reformulated as the rule that alveolar resh occurs when in immediate contact with a preceding alveolar, e.g. בְּמִזְרֶ֖ה [bamiz.'ṛɛː] “with a pitch fork" (Jer. 15.7), מַצְרֵ֣ף [maṣ'ṛef] ‘crucible’ (Prov. 17.3), or in the same syllable as a preceding alveolar, e.g., דַּרְכּ֖וֹ (daṛ'koː) ‘his way’ (Gen 24.21), טַרְפֵּ֤י [ṭarpeː] ‘the leaves of’ (Ezek. 17.9), a consonant with vocalic shewa being treated as belonging to the same syllable as the following consonant, e.g. צְרוּפָ֔ה [ṣaṛuː'fɔː] 'refined (fs)' (2 Sam. 22.31), or when the resh is in immediate contact with or in the same syllable as a following ל l or ן n, e.g., עַרְלֵי־לֵֽב [ʕaṛleː-leːv] ‘uncircumcised in heart’ (Jer. 9.25), גׇּרְנִ֑י [gɔṛniː] ‘my threshing-floor’ (Isa. 21.10), רַנְּנ֣וּ [ṛannə'nuː] ‘rejoice (mp)!’ (Ps. 33.1), רְנָנָ֣ה [ṛənɔː'nɔː] ‘joyful cry’ (Job 3.7). Elsewhere resh had a uvular realization, e.g. רֶ֣כֶב [ʀɛːxɛv] ‘chariotry’ (Exod. 14.9), מַרְאֶ֖ה [maʀ'ʔɛː] ‘appearance’ (Gen. 12.11), שָׁמַ֥ר [ʃɔː'maːʀ] ‘he kept’ (Gen. 37.11), אֶרְדּ֣וֹף [ʔɛʀ'doːf] (Ps. 18.38).

The Sefer Yeṣira, which is likely to have been written in the 7th or 8th century CE, refers to two different pronunciations of resh, which correlate with the variant forms of the בגדכפת letters: “There are seven double letters, bgdkprt... These are pronounced in two ways, which are two opposites—soft and hard, a strong structure as opposed to a weak one” (Gruenwald 197111 56).

In many masuscripts with Babylonian vocalization dagesh and rafe signs are marked on resh according to the same principles as the bgdkpt letters (Yeivin 1985:351-355), in that the dagesh is dagesh lene, marking a harder pronunciation when not preceded by a vowel, rather than dagesh forte, which marked gemination. The passage in the Sefer Yeṣira appears to be relating tn this phenomenon in Babylonian reading. Morag (1960:232) proposed that the more robust pronunciation of resh with dagesh lene in the Babylonian reading was manifested in a greater number of trills than resh with rafe.

In his commenry on this passage of the Sefer Yeṣira, Sa'adya states that these letters are called double because each of them is pronounced in two ways, one hard (ḳalin) and the other soft (dayyin). As for the double nature of the resh, he states that the Tiberians have this feature in their reading of the Bible, whereas the Iraqis (i.e., Babylonians) have it in their speech, but not in their reading of the Bible (Lambert 1891:29). The hard variant of resh he refers to as makrūḵ, which, as we have seen, was an emphatic alveolar trill, We know from the Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ that the double pronunciation of resh in the Tiberian reading tradition consisted of differences in places of articulation, one an advanced uvular and the other an apical-alveloar. Sa'adya’s reference to the existence of the double resh in the speech of the Iraqis seems to be relating to a similar variation in places of articulation of the phoneme. This is likely to be connected with the existence of two reflexes of Classical Arabic r in the Arabic dialect of the Jews of Baghdad, viz. either g or r (Blanc 1964:20-25; Mansour 1974:25-31, 34-35). Sa'adya was referring either to the medieval precursor of this Arabic dialect or to an Aramaic vernacular that possessed this feature and passed it on to the later Arabic speech of the Jews. The fact that Sa'adya docs not identify the double resh in the Babylonian reading tradition suggests that in this tradition the resh was the same place of articulation (apical-alveolar) in all contexts. The disinctions between the variants of resh referred to in Sefer Yeṣira and reflected by the marking of dagesh and rafe in the Babylonian vocalization, therefore, are of a different nature from those referred to by Sa'adya. The former relates to varying degrees of robustness (probably manifested in varying number of trills), while the latter relates to differences in places of articulation. Sa'adya does refer to the speech of the Tiberians, but other sources indicate that the distinction between different types of resh in the Tiberian reading is also found in the local vernacular speech. The author of one extant Masoretic treatise datable to the 10th century states that he undertook fieldwork in the streets of Tiberias to verify his analysis of the resh of the Tiberian reading, on the grounds that resh had the same pronunciation in the local speech of the (Jewish) inhabitants of Tiberias: ‘I spent a long time sitting in the squares of Tiberias and its streets listening to the speech of the common people, investigating the language and its principles, seeing whether anything that I had established was overturned or any of my opinions proved to be false, in what was uttered with regard to Hebrew and Aramaic etc., that is the language of the Targum, for it resembles Hebrew... and it turned out to be correct and accurate’ (Allony 1973). The interpretation of this is not completely clear. The Aramaic mentioned by the author could have been vernacular Aramaic that was still spoken in Tiberias at the time. The Hebrew must have been the recitation of Hebrew liturgy or the occurence of a ‘Hebrew component’ (Hebrew words and phrases) within vernacular speech. The reference to the two types of resh is already found in a Hebrew treatise in the corpus pubtished by Baer and Strack (1879:§7), in which, likewise it is stated that this pronunciation existed in the conversational speech of the common people. The uvular resh is not found in any surviving Middle Eastern biblical reading tradition, all of which regularly pronounce the resh as an apical alveolar. It exists in Ashkenazi reading traditions, apparently under the influence of Yiddish. This is likely to be the origin of the uvular realization of resh in Modern Hebrew.

In the Tiberian vocalization of the Hebrew Bible resh is generally not geminated by dagesh forte, which is a feature of the guttural consonants. Unlike the guttural consonants ע ʿ and ח ḥ, however, resh does occasionally have dagesh, e.g., לֹֽא־כָרַּ֣ת שָׁרֵּ֔ךְ lō-ḵårraṯ šårrēḵ ‘your (fs) navel string was not cut’ (Ezek. 16.4), מָרַּ֣ת נַפְשׁ֑וֹ mårraṯ nap̱šō ‘the bitterness of its (m) soul’ (Prov. 14.10), שֶׁרֹּאשִׁי֙ šɛr-rōši ‘because my head’ (Cant. 5.2), מְא֣וּמָה רָּ֑ע məʾūmå rråʿ ‘anything bad’ (Jer. 39.12), הַרְּעִמָ֑הּ harrəʿīmåh ‘to irritate her’ (I Sam. 1.6). When it is marked in cases such as these, it should be identified as dagesh forte, indicating the gemination of the consonant, unlike the situation in Babylonian vocalization, where dagesh in resh is usually dagesh lene, marked in accordance with the principles of the bgdkpt consonants. In the attested examples of the resh with dagesh in the Tiberian Masoretic tradition, the resh would have had its primary realization as a uvular trill according to the rules that have come down to us from the medieval sources. This does not appear, however, to have been a relevant conditioning factor for the dagesh. Some Middle Eastern Jewish communities pronounce the resh as geminate in their biblical reading where the dagesh was marked, but in all cases they pronounce the resh as an apical-alveolar (Morag 1960:207-208).

In medieval manuscripts of Rabhinic Hebrew that belong to the eastern tradition of transmission, dagesh is marked on resh more frequently than it is in the Tiberian biblical text (Bar-Asher 1987). The tendency to mark dagesh is greater in some eastern manuscripts than in others. It is particularly common in the Parma B Manuscript of the Mishna. The dagesh is marked on resh after the reflexive particle ש־ še- and on the medial resh of a number of verbal and nominal morphological patterns with a geminated middle radical, e.g. עִירֵּב , 29 ʿirreḇ ‘he mixed’ (piʿel) and מְעוּרֶּבֶת məʿurreḇeṯ ‘mixed’ (puʿal), סַרָּגִין sarragīn ‘weavers’ (Bar-Asher 1987:23-14). The resh is pronounced geminated in a similar range of contexts in Middle Eastern reading traditions of Rabbinic Hebrew that have survived into modern times, e.g., Aleppo [ʃerrɑʔa'ta] שֶׁרָּאֲתָה ‘who has seen (fs)’ (Mishna Berakhot 5.6), [ʕər'reːβ] עֵרֵּב ‘he created an ʿeruv’ (Mishna ʿEruvin 2.6), [leharra'gin] לְהַרָּגִין ‘to murderers’ (Mishna Nedarim 3.4) (Katz 1991:32-36). The gemination is more widespread in some traditions than in others. Also, in verbal and nominal parrerns with a geminated middle radical it tends to be restricted to certain verbal roots and lexical items, as is the case in the medieval manuscripts. Sometimes there are variations within the same root that are exploited to express a semantic distinction. In Jerba, for example, the resh in the root ער׳׳ב ʿ-r-b is geminated in the piʿel when it has the meaning of mixing one thing with another, but it is not geminated when it has the sense of creating an ʿeruv (Morag 1960:208-216). Morag (ibid.) believes that the lack of consistency in the germination of the resh across the traditions of Rabbinic reading and within individual traditions may have been the result of varying degrees of influence from biblical reading traditions.

The marking of dagesh in resh in the medieval manuscripts indicates that the tradition of gemination is of considerable time depth and is likely to have its origin at a period when Hebrew was a living language. The dagesh in the resh in the Tiberian biblical tradition in a case such as שֶׁרֹּאשִׁי֙ šɛr-rōši ‘because my head’ (Cant. 5.2) after the particle שֶׁ־ šɛ- may indeed reflect the influence of spoken Hebrew at the time of the formation of the Tiberian reading tradition, this particle itself being a feature of the spoken language. The occucrace of gemination in this context at the boundary between words can be termed ‘junctural gemination’, whereas its occurence in the Rabbinic traditions on the second radical of morphological patterns can be termed ‘morphological germination’. Several other cases of gemination of rest in the Tiberian biblical tradition can be classified as junctural, notably its occurence in dəḥiq, e.g. מְא֣וּמָה רָּ֑ע məʾūmå rråʿ ‘anything bad’ (Jer. 39.12), מָחַ֤צְתָּ רֹּאשׁ֙ måḥāṣtå rrōš ‘you (ms) crushed the head’ (Hab. 3.13). A possible case of morphological gemination of resh in the Tiberian biblical tradition is לֹֽא־כָרַּ֣ת שָׁרֵּ֔ךְ lō-ḵårraṯ šårrēḵ ‘your (fs) navel string was not cut’ (Ezek 16.4). In a few cases the motivation for the dagesh may be to differentiate meani8ng between words or roots of similar form. This may apply, for example, to the dagesh in הַרְּעִמָ֑הּ harrəʿīmåh ‘to irritate her’ (I Sam. 1.6), to distinguish it from the meaning of the verb in אֵֽל־הַכָּב֥וֹד הִרְעִ֑ים ʾēl hak-kaḇōḏ hirʿim ‘the God of glory thundered’ (Ps. 29.3) (Melamed 1948:1), and in מָרַּ֣ת נַפְשׁ֑וֹ mårraṯ nap̱šō ‘the bitterness of its soul’ (Prov. 14.10), to distinguish it from מֹ֣רַת ר֑וּחַ mōraṯ rūaḥ ‘bitterness of soul’ (Gen. 26.35), which is interpreted as having the sense of ‘frustration’ in Targum Onqelos (Yeivin 1985:362).

In the western tradition of Rabbinic Hebrew, represented for example in the Kaufmann Mauscript of the Mishna, a and i vowels sometimes shift to a rounded o before resh, e.g. קורדום ‘hatchet’ (Tiberian Biblical Hebrew קַרְדּוֹם qardōm), דורמסקית dormasqit ‘a woman from Damascus’ (cf. Tiberian דַּרְמֶשֶׂק darmɛseq). Note also the Greek name Ἰορδάνης ‘Jordan’ (Tiberian יַרְדֵּן yardēn), which is attested already in the Septuagint. This shift, which is found also in the environment of labials and the sonorant l, is characteristic of the Palestinian Aramaic dialects in the 1st milleniun C.E., and is found also in the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls, e.g. מהורסיך ‘your destroyers’ (Tiberian מְהָֽרְסַ֥יִךְ məhårsayiḵ Isa, 49.17), תורתן ‘commander’ (Tiberian תַרְתָּן֙ ṯartån Isa. 20.1), הוררט ‘Ararat’ (Tiberian אֲרָרָ֑ט Isa. 37:38) (Kutscher 1979:56). It is possible that it was conditioned by an emphatic realization of resh, which, as we have seen, was a feature of the Tiberian reading tradition. Emphasis is associated with labialization in modern spoken Semitic languages.

In the Dead Sea Scrolls there is evidence for the weakened pronunciation of resh in the fact that it is quite often omitted in writing (though in most cases it has been subsequently inserted above the line). Such omissions occur mainly in the environment of gutturals, e.g., משע m-šʿ (= משער m-šʿr), ‘from the gate’ (Qimron 1986:26-27).

In the Tiberian Masoretic sources there are special rules for the pronunciation of shewa on resh (Yeivin 1980:277). According to some sources, for example, if resh with shewa is the first letter of a noun and is preceded by an affix that has qameṣ or ṣere, the shewa is pronounced vocal, e.g., הָֽרְוָחָ֔ה [hɔːʀavɔːḥɔː] ‘the relief’ (Exod. 8.11) מֵרְפִידִים [meːʀafiː'ðiːm] ‘from Rephidim’ (Exod, 19.2) (In the Tiberian reading tradition vocal shewa has the quality of pataḥ.) Elsewhere when resh with shewa is preceded by a long vowel, however, the shewa is generally silent, as is the the usual rule in the Tiberian tradition, e.g. in the verbal forms יָרְד֥וּ [jɔːʀ'ðuː] ‘they went down’ (Exod. 15.5), יֵרְד֨וּ [jeːʀ'ðuː] ‘they (m) will come down’ (I Sam. 13.12), יֽוֹרְדִ֔ים [joːʀ'ðiːm] ‘coming down (mp)’ (Judg, 9,37). A shewa on resh in the verbal roots גר׳׳ש g-r-š ‘drive out’ and בר׳׳ך b-r-k ‘bless’ is vocalic in certain circumstances. In forms from the root גר׳׳ש g-r-š it is vocalic when the šin has seghol, eg., אֲגָרְשֶׁ֖נּוּ [ʔaʁɔːʀa'ʃɛnnuː] ‘I will drive them out’ (Exod. 23.30), but is otherwise silent, eg, וַיְגָרְשׁוּ [wajʁɔːʀ'ʃuː] ‘and they drove out’ (Judg. 11.2). In forms with shewa on the resh from the root בר׳׳ך b-r-k ‘bless’, if the accent is on the bet, the shewa is silent, e.g, וְהִתְבָּ֥רְכוּ ב֛וֹ [wihiθ'bɔːʀχuː 'voː] ‘they will bless themselves in him' (Jer. 4.2), but if the accent is on the kaf, the shewa is vocalic, e.g. בָּרְכֵ֥נִי [bɔːʀa'χeːniː] ‘bless (ms) me!’ (Gen. 27.34) (cf. Diqduqe ha-Ṭe'amim, ed. Dotan 1967:§21). In Codex Leningradensis the shewa is explicitly marked as vocalic by its being pointed with ḥaṭeph pataḥ: בָּרֲכֵ֥נִי. When forms from the root יר׳׳ד y-r-d ‘to come down’ are followed by נָּא with dagesh due to the rule of dəḥiq, then a shewa on the resh is vocalic, e.g. אֵֽרְדָה־נָּ֣א [ʔeːʀaðɔː n'nɔː] ‘I will go down (Gen. 18.21) (cf. Diqduqe ha-Ṭe'amim, ed. Dotan 1967:§25), although it would otherwise be silent (see above). in Codex Leningradensis it is pointed with ḥaṭeph pataḥ אֵֽרֲדָה־נָּ֣א. There was some variation in the reading of shewa in these forms among the Masoretes, notably between Ben Asher and Ben Naftali. The rule of the shewa in forms from the root גר׳׳ש g-r-š given above, for example, is that of Ben Asher. Ben Naftali read the shewa as silent in all cases in such forms (cf, Kītāb al-Khilaf, ed. Lipschütz 1965:17).

In the Tiberian reading tradition a shewa under the first of a pair of identical consonants that was preceded by a short vowel was silent (Yeivin 1980:180). So, if two occurrences of resh occur in such circumstances, they were pronounced as a geminate cluster, e.g, מֵֽהַרְרֵי [meːhaʀʀeː] ‘from the mountains of’ (Num. 23.7).

The transcriptions of Biblical Hebrew into Greek and Latin datable to the first half of the 1st millennium CE do not refiect the gemination of resh and so correspond in this respect to the Tiberian biblical tradition, e.g., Hexapla ουβάρεχ וּבָרֵךְ u-ḇårēḵ ‘and bless (ms)’ (Ps. 28.9). The Septuagint, however, which is datable to the end of the 1st millenium B.C.E., occasionally transcribes a geminate resh where it does not occur in the Tiberian tradition, eg, Γομορρα עֲמֹרָ֛ה ʿamōrå ‘Gomorrah’ (Gen. 10.19), Σαρρα שָׂרָ֖ה śårå ‘Sarah’ (Gen. 17.15), Χαρραν חָרָ֖ן ḥårån ‘Haran’ (Gen. 11.31).

In cuneiform transcriptions of Hebrew personal names and place names datable to the 1st millennium B.C.E. a resh is occasionally represented as geminate. In the available exampies the gemination appears at the junction of morphological affixes, e.g. am-qar-ru-na (עֶקְרוֹן ʿεqrōn ‘Ekron’, where -ōn can be analysed as an affix), and in theophoric names at the junction of the base and the divine element, e.g., za-kar-ri-ya-ma (זְכַרְיָה zəḵaryå ‘Zechariah’, cf. LXX Ζαχαριας), gir-re-a-ma (גֵּרְיָה gēryå ‘Geriah’).