Die Anfänge Der Hebräischen Grammatik in Spanien
Summary
Grammatical and lexicographic studies of Hebrew began in Spain toward the middle of the 10th century, probably owing to the initiatives taken by Hasday Ibn Shaprūt, who asked Menahem Ibn Sarūq to compile a dictionary of biblical Hebrew (and Aramaic), the Mahberet. With the help of Hasday these studies were institutionalized, most probably through the creation of an official academy. The Mahberet follows the line of tradition established by the school of Tiberias which, since ‘Aharon ben ‘Asher and Sacadya, distinguished between a stable element, the ‘root’, and a variable element, the pa-ragogic one. Menahem intends to compile a dictionary of the roots of biblical Hebrew together with their meanings. His work was criticized by Dunash ben Labrat on some 200 points. Subsequently, a controversy ensued between Menahem’s and Dunash’s students. The great debate between these two authors was centered on the identification of Hebrew roots and on the determination of their respective meanings. There had been little in terms of grammatical systematization going on at the time. Statements concerning textual differences between the Bible editions available in Spain and those of the Tiberias school are of interest. The same is true of remarks about vowel quantity. Indeed, it seems that the doctrine of vowel quantity had been derived by the Spanish grammarians from those of Tiberias. The critiques advanced against the new metre suggests that rhythm was established not only on the basis of combinations of yětedots (shwa + full vowel) and of těnucots (full vowels), but also with the aid of word accent.