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# Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions

**Authors:** [Aaron D. Hornkohl](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/aaron-d-hornkohl/); [Geoffrey Khan](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/geoffrey-khan/) (eds.); contributions by Crellin and Tamponi, Kantor, Myers, Molin, Suchard, Posegay, Hornkohl, Habib, DeCaen and Dresher, Phillips, Outhwaite, Arrant, Khan, Attia, Martínez Delgado, Rand · **Year:** 2020 · **Venue:** Open Book Publishers (Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures 3) **Link:** [doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0207](https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0207) · library `hbobook-obp0207-hornkohl-studies-semitic-vocalisation-reading-traditions` · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (Open Book Publishers)

[**1** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/hbobook-obp0207-hornkohl-studies-semitic-vocalisation-reading-traditions/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we readmonograph[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0207)
- [PDF](https://zenodo.org/api/records/19848312/files/ff10a672-857b-4adb-b6bb-c54104eb277d_book.pdf/content)

**Authors (2)**

1. Aaron D. Hornkohl
2. Geoffrey Khan

Citations and author metrics from OpenAlex (); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

A volume of sixteen papers, mostly from Cambridge workshops of 2016–2018, on how Semitic reading traditions were pronounced and written, from late antiquity to the Middle Ages; this card is written from the editors' preface, which summarises every paper, and the contents. Kantor shows from Greek and Latin transcriptions that the gemination after wa- in wayyiqṭol is not yet general in Origen's Secunda, is general by Jerome, and is absent from the Samaritan tradition: a Second Temple Jewish development. Myers finds systematic Greek vowels standing for Hebrew gutturals in Septuagint Ezra–Nehemiah. Molin shows that Biblical quotations in Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls match the later Babylonian reading, with guttural weakening from the Aramaic vernacular. Hornkohl argues that two vocalisations at odds with the consonants (the qal construct infinitive and the 3ms suffix on plural nouns) are old, not post-biblical. Habib shows that Saadya and Karaite exegetes used both qere and ketiv, chosen to harmonise parallel verses. DeCaen and Dresher explain pausal forms under conjunctive accents as limits of the accent system, not as different traditions. Phillips shows that the scribe of the Leningrad Codex marked exceptional vocalic shewas inconsistently, for graphic economy. Further papers cover "common" Bibles and non-standard Tiberian manuscripts from the Genizah, imperfect medieval performance of the Tiberian reading, Ashkenazic variants, Andalusi metrics, piyyut rhyme, Neo-Punic vowels and the shared Syriac–Arabic–Hebrew vocalisation tradition.

## Ideas

- I1. Pausal forms as a prosodic boundary marker independent of the accent: a pausal vowel under a conjunctive accent is an expected case, not an error. The reader of the cantillation tree should accept such mismatches and log them, using the DeCaen–Dresher list as a test.
- I2. An exceptional-shewa list: the contexts where the Masoretic treatises read a vocalic shewa that the sign alone would suggest is silent, with how the Leningrad Codex marks each (gaʿya, ḥaṭef, nothing). The syllabifier in the phonology rules must take this list as an override, because the codex is not consistent.
- I3. Nonstandard Tiberian manuscripts as an OCR/normalisation test: the deviations of "common" Bibles (vowel sign interchanges, plene spellings) are the realistic noise `tools/ocrfix` and the pointed mode of `tools/hbo` will meet outside the Leningrad Codex; a table of the attested interchanges is a deterministic normaliser.
- I4. The wayyiqṭol timeline (no doubling in the Secunda, doubling by Jerome, none in the Samaritan reading) belongs with the verb chapter's description of וַיִּ־: the form is recognised by its consonants and the patah + dagesh, but its history says the doubling is a reading feature, not part of the Standard Biblical Hebrew morphology.
- I5. Qere/ketiv choice in exegesis follows parallel verses: a check over the corpus that pairs each qere/ketiv site with its parallel passages (Samuel–Chronicles, Kings–Isaiah) shows which reading the parallel supports.

## For Mova

I1 goes into [2. Cantillation: the accents (te'amim)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/02-cantillation/); I2 into [Phonology of Biblical Hebrew](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/03-phonology/); I3 into `tools/ocrfix` and [1. Script and pointing](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/01-script/); I4 into [The verb](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/06-verb/) (wayyiqṭol); I5 is a measure over the `tools/macula` conversion of ketiv/qere sites.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```
@book{hornkohl2020studies,
  title = {{Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions}},
  author = {Hornkohl, Aaron D. and Khan, Geoffrey},
  year = {2020},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0207}
}
```

- [← previous Studies in Rabbinic Hebrew](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbobook-obp0164-heijmans-studies-rabbinic-hebrew/)
- [next → New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbobook-obp0250-hornkohl-new-perspectives-biblical-rabbinic-hebrew/)
- [↑ back to Ancient Hebrew](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo/)

## References

18 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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